(I'm only up to 29 for the year, which is less than half as far along as kblincoln. Not that it's a race. Race!!!)

( Franny K Stein, Small Steps, Zoe Lama, Girl at Sea, 13LBE )


*I've been thinking -- do you think books with extremely hooky titles/concepts set your expectations more firmly in one direction or another? And usually, they make you expect something more fluffy? Like with 13LBE, I was expecting more of a silly romp with a very tidy structure. Similarly Sachar's There's A Girl in the Boys' Bathroom -- It's a lovely exploration of bullying; a very strong book. But I hated it when I read it at 10, because I was expecting total fluff.

"Twenty years ago, when I wanted to become a writer, a big part of the dream was being able to put little videos on the internet."

funny book marketing video here.

The Oregonian's food section last week had a section on pudding cakes. Has anyone heard of these before? I hadn't, but I guess they've been around at least since the 1890's.

There were a few steps of whisking and beating egg whites and whatnot, but nothing tricky. I made mocha almond ones last Friday (adapting from their mocha hazelnut recipe, which used flavored coffee, which we don't have). This is a picture of them before they went in the oven.

What's nifty is that as they cool, they develop distinct layers -- pudding on the bottom, and a layer of sponge cake on top. They looked rather impressive compared to the amount of effort. They would be good with cookies, since there's no crunch in them.

Also, putting two desserts in the name of a dessert makes anything better. Like cookie pie would be good too.




Also also, wow! Just spotted a western tanager outside my window in the dogwood.

'Course, the little-known, real reason to go to Clarion West is you get a poster. I love my 2006 poster, but I'm also crazy for all the other ones that Jacob McMurray has designed. Now he's posted the 2008 one and yep, I'm a sucker for that green* and orange.





*Shocking? Yes, I know. You are shocked.

Live and launching at the Writers' Dojo tonight at 7! I'll be reading my poem from the issue, "How to Walk in Heels".

But first, off to face paint kitten faces.....

I sold a quiz to kids' site Imagination Cafe last month. And now it's live! I'm rather delighted by this.

Li'l Smokies? Sloppy Joes? Surely you've all wondered: What School Lunch Are You?

Sign up for a free account and you can find out for yourself, right here!

Huzzah and OMG. I have finished the Novel of Doooom!!!@1112!!!11!*

I shouldn't call it that. And actually it's only been 21 months since I started the short story, and only 15 months since I decided to turn the story into a novel. Not that long overall. BUT I would get going at a good pace and then get totally stuck. Lather rinse repeat. I know the reason I was finally able to finish it is because finishing the kids' books this winter gave me the tools to complete this.

And mostly, it got called that because HISTORY was against it. I had NEVER completed an adult F/SF book, and yes, I've started a bunch. This is my FIRST completed one.

And now? It sits till my brain has enough distance to revise. It's only a 60K novel now, but it'll likely be at 70K after revisions. Still a Shorty McShortpants, but not too bad, I think.


*AKA the suburban fantasy set in Lawrence KS, AKA the novel version of the story "The Color of Blue", AKA So this programmer meets an elf, see...?

Another contender for my sir mix-a-lot parody love, Baby Got Book.

Okay, the last time I did any Thon-ning was Jump Rope for Heart in 6th Grade. We all jumped a lot of jumps in order to collect our donations -- singles, double dutch...all with those white-and-blue scratched plastic jump ropes, that hit the pavement with satisfying clacks. There were bunches of teams, all ages, spread all over the big parking lot near Perkins. It was chilly in the morning, but someone had powdered hot chocolate. And there was a TV crew just before lunch, and lunch was pizza. (I know, right?) But of course we were starving by pizza time.

Every year Clarion West holds a Write-A-Thon to collect donations. I was so busy last summer that I decided to sponsor others rather than officially be a writer myself. But this year I'm going to try it, likely with some sort of novel-oriented goal.

Stay tuned for more details! Clarion West is hoping to raise 25K this year to use as an endowment for the Founders' Fund.

Hippies act out protein synthesis with the help of pan flutes, interpretive dance, and the Jabberwocky. The very unique video is here.

(My sister (who is really truly coming to Eugene for her biochem doctorate, yay!!) sent this to me.)

tagged by neile, & here we go!

Here are your rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences here.
5. Put the meme and answer in your journal, tag five people and the madness continues.


The crowd shouted for more, Ginny and Armpit right along with them. The lights remained dark. After about five minutes they came back out and did "Just Hold On a Little Longer."

Louis Sachar, Small Steps! Sequel to Holes. It's the last one on my library pile after I just worked down through some others.

Who wants to play? How about kblincoln, carolineyoachim, adsistla, jocelynkelly, and seattle_liz?

"Camellia," the witch said. "I am going to take over the world."

"Whatevs," I said. The witch is always coming up with new plans to take over the world. The last one involved me releasing divebombing doves in the courthouse.

So I've been doing a lot of revisions in the last month or two. I think I'm finally getting better at the strange part of revisioning where you see problem B over here, and then after staring at it a loooong while you realize that fixing it actually means fixing chunk A somewhere else. (Usually somewhere earlier in the ms.)

Here's an obvious example. If a character's motivation doesn't make sense during plot point B, then it's pretty likely you have to fix that in the character's motivations way before that point.

Does that happen to you guys? Do you have tricks for spotting when a problem spot isn't the source of the problem?

A) It's perfectly gorgeous out there today. I think it's supposed to hit 75.
B) First time having tulips since my grade school house in Lawrence!

Since tulips tend to decline instead of doing bunny-fast multiplication like daylilies or iris, I couldn't logically make the budget work to plant them when we were landscaping the farmstead. But look at that sunlit tulip! Bang for the buck.

Haiku2 for tinaconnolly
caramel sauce from my old high school class has been doing revisions
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Created by Grahame

Oh, I went to a thing with a Highlights editor tonight. It was fun. Well, not the part where I left 45 minutes early and got there 15 minutes late. Traffic from 26 to the I-5 bridge, ya know. Don't mind the traffic as much as I mind looking like a jerk. (Oh, and then? I forgot my real glasses in the car as I ran in. So I had to sit there listening attentively with my sunglasses on. Hell-O! Double jerk!)

But did you see that sunlight? I feel less moldy now.

Oh boy, was Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword delightful. So witty, so feminist, so human, so lovingly plotted. It slips in perfect, subtle twists and turns until you laugh out loud with where it's led you.

Series Coverage: what a cool new feature on LibraryThing!

If I weren't the productive writerly sort of person I am I would sooooooo be in there right now adding in series info for all my weird kids' books that no one else has.



:: squishes inner librarian firmly down ::

I just changed the dialogue
"Too little, too late," to
"Sucks the dog didn't barf faster."

Talcum draft #3.....done. Talcum query draft umpty ump.....done.

Now it all gets put away until Sunday, when draft #4 commences....

Kirsten and I went up to Hugo House last Sunday for James Patrick Kelly's class on Revisions.

Which was excellent. Kelly goes on my list of super-recommended SF teachers. He shared a lot of good tools and exercises. One that really struck home was the advice to always write an elevator pitch early on - for stories, books, whatever. That's one of those things I always kinda think I should be doing but don't necessarily.

Another suggestion was doing super fast freewriting about the main character, and then looking to see what comes up that didn't make it in the story, that maybe should've.

So right now I'm drafting query letters for Talcum and Genie. Genie condenses beautifully into a bite-sized pitch. Talcum does not. Two people have pointed out a minor structural difficulty with the Talcum query that was also pointed out as a problem with the ms.

See, doesn't this say that I should've been thinking through my elevator pitch sooner for Talcum?

But it's got a happy ending, because when we did the freewriting exercise on Sunday, I used the main character from Talcum and realized something about him. I'm also an organic writer, which is great when you realize your subconscious somehow slipped everything you need now into the text then. (Do subconsciousnesses time travel, maybe?) Combine all these things with the power of sleep and this morning I realized what I could do to easily fix my structure problem.

Now all I have to do is avoid the lure of the PORTLAND SUNSHINE!!