Hiya, 

A lot has happened since my last post. Travel. Semi-retirement. A pandemic. Working from home. Oh, and I got a tattoo! 

Travel included Hawaii, Mexico, England, Ireland, Scotland, France, New Zealand (twice), Australia, Alaska again. Some cool things were frigatebirds in Lareto, Skara Brae in Orkney, Stonehenge, Hobbiton, Tasmanian devils in Hobart, nesting albatross in Port Chalmers, Hector's dolphins in Akaroa, a flock of bald eagles fishing in Juneau. 

The tattoo happened in 2017 to commemorate my first trip to New Zealand. NZ is just as green as Ireland, just sayin'. I'm an accent sponge and after two weeks folks thought I lived in Aukland and were asking how long it had been since I'd been back to the States. Sadly, I lost my Kiwi accent soon after returning home. 

Work-wise, I stepped down as team lead and went part time in 2018. Started working from home in March 2020 (thanks Covid). 

Writing-wise, had a few Covid years where writing just wasn't happening. Lots of reading happened though, so there's that. Last year I did NaNo in an effort to write something and ended up with 50K of a romance novel, which is still in progress as the writing's slowed down again. This year I had three pieces published at 50-Word Stories and have four forthcoming at 50 Give or Take in '24, all under my pen name. 

Take care, stay safe, hug those you love. 

Kat

NaNoWriMo 2015

Maybe some day I'll finish my vacation blogs.

I participated in National Novel Writing Month again this year. Every time I do it's different. Each story has its own way of coming into being. Each month has its own real life events interfere with the writing.

This year, interference was run primarily by The Day Job. My manager left the company about half way through November and it had a much bigger impact on my daily tasks than I expected. I didn't get to write on my breaks; half the time I didn't even get my breaks!

I fell farther behind in word count than in any of the previous eight times I actually made 50K.

So what's a NaNo veteran to do? Buckle down and write!

My characters cooperated. I owe them chocolate or booze or something.

The final Friday of November I wrote 6111 words. Saturday 6202. Sunday, Nov 29, another 5472 to bring my word count to 50002! 17785 words in three days is a personal record, one I hope not to approach again while still working full time.

(I had to finish on Sunday because the Monday after Thanksgiving is probably the busiest day of the year at work for me and my team. That meant no NaNo words would happen.)

When I validated, the lovely NaNo Word Count Bots gave me an additional 215 words gratis. If I haven't said it before, I now declare my love for the NaNo Word Count Bots.

If you want to see a graphic representation of my November, it's HERE. It's a graph! Like Science!

I Went to the Yukon! (part one)

I took a cruise back in May to Alaska, sailing round trip from San Francisco because I love being at sea. I hope to post pictures from each stop, but they won't be in order. The Yukon is first because it was the most thrilling for me.

The Yukon! Growing up we studied the gold rush of the late 1800's in school, I read a lot of Jack London. It seemed so far away, so rugged and dangerous - somewhere in the world I'd never see. BUT. I went there! Not on foot during the winter like the miners did. I traveled in luxury, I admit. But I'm not physically rugged enough to see it any other way.

It was an excursion out of Skagway, AK. Here's the view from my cabin window when we arrived.

The 'obstruction' is one of the life boats. The first time I sailed to Alaska I had an interior cabin. Never again! Even though they're cheaper, I had to set my alarm every morning because there was no daylight. Having to set an alarm on vacation just to catch breakfast is not how I like to travel. 

On the dock, waiting for the bus. 

A view of Skagway from the bus. According to Dallan, our bus driver, Radio Shack is the place to shop. They have frozen pizzas, coffee, and recently added an ATM - the second one in town. 

Shadows

I haven't posted any fiction for a while, so here's a story. It's the one posted over at Big White Box not that long ago.

Shadows

As she lies beneath crisp white sheets, I imagine Grand-mère's eighty-nine years of memories repeating over and over in her mind, jumbled by time. When she's remembering a good one, the crinkles around her eyes are a myriad of tiny smiles. I wonder if she's thinking of someone she knew, someone long dead, someone she hopes to see soon. Or is it her garden in Strasbourg, the cathedral looming high behind? "Dat shade vas a shade from God," she'd often say.

Last year I was in Strasbourg, in that shade, Mom explaining, pointing, a good tour guide but not knowledgeable enough to know when silence said more. I wanted silence, to feel the cool of that shadow on my cheek, to think about Grand-mère feeling it, too, back when she was my age, back when she was striving to feed her young family on puny vegetables grown in the cathedral's shadow, her neighbors calling, "Janine, how goes it?" in the dialect of Strasbourg, and Grand-mère's answer, "The weeds, they grow."

And she grew. Struggled, fought, endured. Thrived on it all.

Me? I collect my paychecks, shop the shops, glide along, untested, unchallenged. Could I have done what she did? Not just survived, but thrived, as she did? I need my microwave, my cell phone, my laptop. She had her wood-burning stove and her hands, strong and competent.

Now, her hand nearly weightless in mine, Grand-mère's wandering in a memory. "Have some potatoes," she says. And I remember her potatoes, sautéed brown with onions or creamed in a casserole, potatoes fixed a hundred different ways. I'd eaten them all, but have no recipes, only the flavor memories on my tongue.

"Don't fret, Liebchen," she whispers, her touch light as a butterfly wing. "The shade, it grows."

Big White Box

One of my writing groups (I'm in three; just sayin') has an experiment going on. We've set up a website where we showcase authors and their work. This has been live for a few months now. I'm just getting around to posting about it.

Big White Box 

Our featured authors so far include Brad Walseth, Jim C. Hines, Frances McNamara, and Eric Larson. If you are or know of someone who'd like to be featured, please use the contact form on the main page. Alternatively, you could leave suggestions here and I'll forward them to the group.

We're also putting up our own short fiction. Each Sunday (or thereabouts) our webmaster posts a story under Big White Blog. Today's story - "Shadows" - is by me! The stories are mostly less than 500 words. I think we each have three or four pieces up there so far. There's no common theme or genre, so hopefully you'll find something you like.

We're also trying our hands at running writing contests. Our first one closed recently. That's all I'm going to say about it until we complete the judging process.

So, if you're looking for something short to read, try our Big White Blog. If you like what you see, please tell your friends. ;-)

February First Blizzard

Nothing like a snow day to encourage creativity! All my plans were cancelled due to snow and wind. Snow alone wouldn't stop things, but the high winds and associated Blizzard Warning! and Dangerous Travel! are ignored at peril.

I'm not fond of peril for myself. For fictional characters, the more the better! But not so much in real life.

I've taken a few pictures, and I'll add more as the day progresses. Here's my patio at around 11 am this morning:

And here it is around 1:30 pm: 

Randomness

Happy Solstice!

I watched Hogfather last night - a tradition in my household. Back when my daughter was in high school, over winter break we'd read the book Hogfather (by Terry Pratchett) out loud to each other, doing voices for the characters. She does a fantastic Death!

This afternoon I'm going to make clam chowder. And poke at the synopsis for Rising Tide.

I may Read A Book! Haven't done that in far too long.

And that's the summary of my oh-so-glamorous life at the moment.

Change at Kat's Rambles

Hi to all my followers,

There's a tab here for The Inkwell, a story I co-wrote with someone. That someone recently requested all sections of the story under her name be removed.

As doing so would gut the story such that what remained made no sense, I opted to take The Inkwell private.

My apologies to anyone in the midst of reading it.

NaNo 2014 Success

My software: 50,000. NaNo bots: 50,177. 

That is all. 

NaNoWriMo is still going

My word count is just a tad north of 45K. Finishing today will be a challenge. I'll try, but no guarantees.

I'm attempting a space opera this year. I went into it with a ludicrously abysmal level of world building. Which means basically there wasn't any. This type of story requires the creation of planets and cultures and non-human sentient species and technology and ... and ... and thinking the story would happen without all those things was, in hindsight, just the kind of craziness NaNo is all about.

This story has more [bracket info needed] than anything I've ever written before. I've even given up on naming characters! [person name] [character name needed] [somebody] are far too common in this document!

I suspect my future self will have some succinct, unprintable-type words for my present self.

BUT

Cover! That's a first for me, having a cover. Over Thanksgiving dinner, my daughter, her roommate and I were discussing the story and came up with a pulp science fiction magazine type cover idea. One of those with Strong Man Holding Weapon in one hand with other arm wrapped around Woman With Arms Raised and Mouth Open to Scream and an especially Menacing Tentacle wrapping both of them.

I really liked it.

And while procrastinating thinking about the story, I googled pulp SF covers and discovered this AMAZING website where you can make your own cover! Of course, that image already in my head wasn't available. C'est la vie, n'est pas?

There then passed a mumbly mumbly amount of time. But I has cover! (Several actually, but I think this one is the best.)

So now I must finish writing the story. 

(The phrase "unrealistically sexy" is homage to Shadow Unit and its unrealistically sexy FBI agents.)

NaNoWriMo 2014

Yep, I'm doing it again.

They say you don't learn to write novels, you learn to write this novel. They say every novel comes to the writer in a somewhat different way.

In my limited experience, this is true.

My last novel had strong characters that were easy for me to write, but there were times I couldn't see what happened beyond the scene I was working on.

This novel I'll be starting in two days? I have a strong sense of the over-arching plot, large vistas, the big picture stuff. What I don't have is characters! This is scary for me. You can't tell a story without characters.

First drafts suck. This is another thing they say that is true. They also say a first draft is the writer telling herself a story. Subsequent drafts are the writer telling others the story. What that means is I can start with a major info dump of all these big vistas, describe the plot as I currently see it. Start with the panorama view, then zoom in.

And that's when those characters better start waving at me to tell their stories!

Got my fingers crossed and my stash of coffee.

Portland!

I finished the story I mentioned in my last post. By the deadline!

The reason for that deadline: I was flying to Portland, Oregon to meet up with my on-line writing group. We were each to bring a story to share. It was our first time being all in the same place.

The visit was amazingly fun. Lots of talking. Many photos were taken. Here's just a sampling.

Cannon Beach on a glorious cloud-free day. I bought All the Earrings.

The following day: Multomah Falls

A tree near Horsetail Falls. This one could be a prompt for a story! 

In our search for lunch we crossed Bridge of the Gods to Washington state. So I've been in Washington. For maybe a half hour. The photo was taken in Oregon, looking across the Columbia River to Washington.

The next day was an inside day.  First stop was Voodoo Doughnuts. The filling on this one was raspberry. The sugar rush lasted several hours. 

We had to go to Powell's Books. This is the entrance. Enticing, isn't it? And the store delivers on that promise. So. Many. Books!

Flying into Portland, I saw Mount St Helens and friends out one side, followed by Mt Hood on the other side. I was in an aisle seat so didn't get pictures. Flying out of Portland I had a window. Here's Mt Hood.

It was a marvelous trip. We discussed so many things, including our plans (or lack thereof in my case) for NaNo in November. Maybe we can make our getting together an annual thing.

New Inkwell Entry

I had today off from The Day Job. I planned to work on a short story that has a deadline of September 26. Instead I dithered. A lot. Reorganized my Safari bookmarks. Cleaned up the laptop desktop. Read over the stories and story fragments from two recent NaNoWriMo rebel years (2012 and 2013). Copied out the pieces that looked promising.

One of those stories was set in The Inkwell world. (See the tab at the top of this page. It's a story I wrote jointly with Dixiegirl, started during NaNo 2009). So I did a rough revision and posted it HERE.

That September 26 short story? No progress. I believe I have effectively spent my day in that well-known phenomenon: displacement activities. Well, it's not bedtime yet...

Reading Update

Here are the books I re-read since the beginning of May:

N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, The Kingdom of Gods). Epic fantasy. Not earth Medieval Europe based, wonderfully developed characters. Naha is a favorite.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Sharing Knife Series (4 books: Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, Horizon). Fantasy/romance. Has a great depiction of riverboat culture.

Kate Elliott, Spiritwalker Trilogy (Cold Magic, Cold Fire, Cold Steel). Epic fantasy. I love Ms Elliott's worldbuilding. An example: an intelligent species based on troodons.

Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens. Because it's a delightfully funny apocalypse tale.

Elizabeth Bear, 2 books: Blood and Iron and Whiskey and Water. Urban fantasy. Inventive combination of classic Fairie, the Morgan/Arthur myth, mages, werewolves, and a dragon, centered in New York City. Her Morgan is my favorite Morgan ever. And Ms Bear gives the kelpie realistic horse-like behaviors when he's in human form.


Here's what I read that was new for me since the beginning of May:

C.J. Cherryh, The Morgaine Saga. A collection of three SF novels; interplanetary time travel and culture clashes.

N.K. Jemisin & Hiromi Goto, Systems Fail. A collection of short stories and essays published for WisCon38, where they were the Guests of Honor.

Ursula Vernon, Toad Words and Other Stories. Ms Vernon tells delightfully original fairy tales. She is also very good at re-imagining traditional fairy tales. If you're unfamiliar with her work, starting here would be a good choice. Then read Digger (beginning of the story)  - just sayin'.

I finished Toad Words today. I think I'm ready to tackle more new books now.

I Wrote A Post for My Blog!

The day job has been claiming an increasing amount of my time since around the middle of June, leaving me tired and with few active brain cells come the weekend. Training five people at the same time with little help will do that. If they'd started at the same time, I could have trained with easy, lecture-like sessions. So their starts were staggered. A week or two apart. I mostly get to say the same stuff five times over!

Writing has been sporadic to non-existent.

I did read many books - well, that should be re-read many books. Didn't feel up to the thinking required when reading one for the first time.

I consider re-reading as writing research. When a book is well done, I just devour the story. It takes two or three tries for me to be able to pay attention to how the author managed that magic! So during the re-reads, I flagged pages that might help me with the revisions I have looming.

My novel and a short story need revising. I'm up for critique in September. Last time it was my turn I had to pass. I will not do that again.

Also, I'll start posting here more often. I have a target of once a week.

My plans haven't been working out very well recently. I still make 'em. Maybe I'm the Overly Optimistic Poster Person.

WisCon 38 is over :(

I returned home today from this year's WisCon.  WisCon LINK

It was an amazing weekend. The Guests of Honor (GOH) and the Tiptree Award winner's speeches were beautiful, provocative and kickass. I cried and cheered along with 1000 friends.

That's how WisCon feels. Like you're there with friends. The atmosphere is welcoming, inclusive. It's easy to strike up conversations, you can wave and say "hi" to someone you saw in the audience at a panel and most likely they'll return the greeting. Con friends.

So. Pictures or it didn't happen, right? Here's the view from my hotel room, because View. It's the Wisconsin capitol building near sundown.

April Summary

Hi.

Only hours remain before April Camp NaNo is over. The structure is different than November NaNo.  You get assigned cabins. Like going away to camp!

You can request cabin mates, so the members of my on-line writing group as well as a British NaNo friend were all in the same cabin. There were also seven people we hadn't met before camp. We had s'mores, scimitars, and chocolate wine. Also Baileys and Guinness and cocoa. Some reached their goals and others didn't, but we had some fun conversations.

I signed up to edit for 25 hours on Rising Tide. I put in more than 27. The final battle scene is longer now and I punched up Rori's role at the end (as requested by beta reader Theresa L). Just a few more tweaks and it will be time to start on synopsis and query.

Scary.

I read five of the seven volumes in Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series. (I read the first two books in March.) Ms Elliott writes epic fantasy. Each of these books was about 600 pages long (mass market paperbacks). I enjoyed the series, but I like her Spiritwalker series better.

And that pretty much accounts for my free time for the entire month of April.

Oops, I did it again

My on-line writing group just decided to do Camp NaNoWriMo in April. Spontaneously. During our meeting. We all signed up and requested each other as cabin mates. During the meeting. There were many giggles.

I'll be editing Rising Tide.

Maybe writing a new short piece as well.

It's camp.

No Pressure.

I think I'll be playing ukulele around the campfire now and then.

I helped!

Some dude on the internet was lamenting what he perceived as the sorry state of science fiction. I didn't see his rantings myself. One of the things he said was that women are destroying the genre.

Well, that went viral on Twitter. As these things do.

In short order (about a half hour), the editor of Lightspeed Magazine, John Joseph Adams, decided they would do a special issue - Women Destroy Science Fiction. A kickstarter was set up for $5000.

The idea tapped into folks' outrage. Stretch goal after stretch goal was unlocked. The project successfully funded at over $50,000! There will not only be Women Destroy SF (out in June), but also Women Destroy Fantasy and Women Destroy Horror (in October). All the stories will be written and edited by women.  And early next year there'll be Queers Destroy Science Fiction.

I'm proud I helped make this happen.

My pledge package includes every issue of Lightspeed (#1-46), 24 issues of Fantasy (my choice among the 57 issues they had - Fantasy was rolled into Lightspeed several years ago), and 24 issues of Nightmare Magazine.

I haven't done the math, and probably won't, to figure out how many short stories I now have waiting to be read.  All these, plus two anthologies I purchased about a month ago.

Reading fuels the writing.

Maybe I'll acquire afterburners!

Books Read So Far in 2014

Hi.  I'm still around, just busy.

So far this year I've managed to complete a total of five books. Five. Yeah, only five.

(1) Jonathan Strahan, ed., The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, volume seven. This is a Big Book, 624 pages in my trade paperback version. I started it last year. One thing about anthologies, they don't have the pressure of what happens next pushing you to pick them up again soon. But I finished it. Yay! Good, thought-provoking stories in here.

(2) Jo Walton, Among Others. Many wonderful things have been said about this book. They're true. This is the first book of hers I've read. I will seek out more.

When I was in junior high and high school, I always loved really thick books. Thick books meant you got to live in that story world longer. I still favor them. If you do, too, try these next three, at around 600 pages each!

(3) (4) & (5) Kate Elliott's Spiritwalker Trilogy:  Cold Magic, Cold Fire and Cold Steel
I read these last year, and they've been calling to me to re-read for quite some time - my subconscious, on the job. Now that I've completed them again, I noticed scenes to study for help with some of the issues in my current WIP (the novel, not the short stories so much).

I'm almost done with Catherynne M Valente's The Bread We Eat in Dreams. This is a collection of short works. There are stories in here I absolutely love, including "The Consultant," "The Wolves of Brooklyn," and "Twenty-five Facts About Santa Claus."

Not sure how much more book reading I'll be doing. I have many, many short stories to read. More about that in my next post.