The Return of The Absent Author

As the man once said, reports of my death are premature. Got your attention yet? Sorry to be gone so long. Time lately is a tricky slippery silvery flashy thing which seems to zip past like Mercury on atomic powered rollerblades, late for a mission to parallel worlds unknown. But I digress.

Here's the excuse and its a good one. I've been very very focused on finishing my novel: The Adventures of Mungo Tim. No energy left for blogging, my friends.

I finished the rough draft of the mostly complete story Easter weekend and have been slogging through the rewrites most every day since. In any case, Tim's book is finally finished after much writing, rewriting, elation, discouragement, and frustration. And more rewriting. How many times do you have to rewrite a sentence before it satisfies the gods of creation? I am still not sure.

But, I am declaring that the book is done after little more than a year since I actually started the writing. It goes now to a 'real' editor for suggestions regarding content and line errors (spelling, punctuation, etc). Then back to me for the necessary corrections. What happens next? Creative discussions regarding layout, cover design, pictures, etc. After that? To several test readers. Then, infinity and beyond. Its anybody's guess.

Aside from growing Tim to his present forty feet from dragon's egg, I've taken some interesting trips in the real world in the Winnebago with Danny and dogs, which I will tell you about soon, complete with some dandy pictures I took of the Blue Ridge Mountains. But that's for another post. This one is just to tell those of you who still drop by that I am still around and to share a bit of Tim's manuscript. If I posted any of this part before, pardon me, I've done several dozen edits since and haven't the foggiest idea what parts I've shared.

TTFN

Here Be Dragons

Even sleeping, the dragon would have been an impressive sight had anyone with eyes been there to see. As it was, his only observer was a sun-bleached human skull perched precariously on a granite ledge above the snoring beast's head. The dragon was dreaming. He twitched and drooled a little, yipping like an excited dog. His mouth opened, exposing wicked looking fangs the size of a knight's broadsword before his jaws snapped shut again. His back feet moved as if he was chasing something almost certain to be tasty. He growled. His wing tips twitched and he snorted, dislodging a small puff of smoke from his nostrils, before becoming still again.

Somewhere between thirty and forty feet long from nose to tail, the beast was covered in iridescent green and blue scales. His jaws and head resembled a crocodile on the body of a legendary Tyrannosaurus Rex. The dragon's powerful spiked tail could immobilize the largest of cave bears with a single sweep and his muscled back legs, which were somewhat longer than his front ones, had claws that could easily rip steel. His leathery bat-like wings enabled him to fly with ease and he could breathe fire. He was intelligent, with learning the equal of any scholar on his home world of Terra. His true name, unknown to anyone but himself and the skull on the wall, was Salamagundus Ap Tim Tim. And as far as he knew, he was the last living dragon in West Mickle.

“What's that,” said the dragon, momentarily jolted from sleep by the rumble of his own snoring. “Is anyone there?” He raised his head and glanced around his sleeping chamber with eyes glowing like coals. Seeing nothing amiss, he lowered his head again, closed his eyes, and was soon back asleep. Sunlight crept through a ventilation hole in the ancient cave wall and danced teasingly across his face. Feeling the sudden and unexpected warmth, the dragon opened his eyes again. He stretched his lizardy frame and yawned widely, curling and uncurling his talons before running his long tongue across his fangs.

“What's this?” he asked aloud. “Could it be a sunny day? In August? In West Mickle? Extraordinary.” Rising up on all fours, he lumbered over to the ventilation hole in the stone wall and peered outside. “Well, well,” he observed. “It is a balmy day at that. I thought I was only dreaming of the sun.”

He grinned, remembering that in his recently interrupted dream he was flying high above the far off Kirkudshire desert, the fine grained sand below glistening white in the orange-yellow glare from above. In the dream, herds of fat grayish-brown wazzles and horned tick tocks ran through scrubby black-green vegetation, fleeing from a pair of striped taggers. He could almost hear the squealing wazzles and the thundering hooves of the frightened tick tocks as the taggers roared their hunting challenge. He shook the dream away.

He turned and addressed the skull across the gloomy room. “Not a rain cloud in sight out there,” he said. “What do you think, Fred? Might it be a good day for flying?” There was no answer from the skull.

The dragon shrugged. He yawned again. “Or not. Perhaps another nap in the sunlight, outside on one of the ledges for a change. It has been days since I could venture outdoors.”

His stomach rumbled reminding him that his last meal was paltry and also several days ago. “Alternatively,” he said, “I could see if any tasty mountain sheep might be gamboling about enjoying the lovely weather.”

His mouth watered at the thought and hot saliva trickled down his scaly chin. “Yes, I think I might go and scout out a meal first and then have a nap on a ledge afterwards. What do you think?” He cocked his head, but there was no answer from the skull to this question either.

“Well,” said the dragon. “I see you are as talkative as ever. No matter. I'm off. See you later, Fred.”

Leaving his sleeping chamber, the dragon made his way through several corridors, eventually emerging from the cave. Flapping his emerald wings, he sprung aloft, iridescent scales glistening in the sunlight as he rode the thermals over the peaks of Dragon's Crag.

On accomplishing more and less

Recently, I realized that in several weeks it will be three years since my mother died, which was a defining period in my life for a number of reasons.

1. I realized that chronology had caught up with me and I was officially the eldest member of my family. Me, the matriarch. One who is expected to be wise and mature both in years and behavior. (Do not laugh here). One who is, well, old. Having a birthday two months later and adding up the numbers made me reflect that the majority of my life on earth was indeed behind me. None of these thoughts, to be honest, was a happy one.

2. My number two daughter discovered a week after my mother's passing that she was pregnant, making me not only a matriarch but a grandmother to be. Wow, talk about passages! Loss, pain, joy and hope all rolled into one package.

3. Losing the last parent suddenly and unexpectedly (despite my mother's advanced age) made me realize again just how fragile life is and regret the things begrudged, undone, unsaid, unasked, unknown. I wished then and wish now that I had listened better. Now that questions cannot be asked or answered, especially.

4. At the time of my mothers death, I was trying to sell my house as a means to provide more monthly income and downsize my lifestyle but like many in our area in 2007 couldn't find a buyer. My mother's passing made the move unnecessary and eased my immediate financial worries during a time of deep Recession in our country. I wish it had happened another way, but what, is is and I am thankful to my parents for their parting gift.

I have reflected recently more than I would like, usually in the early morning hours when I should be falling asleep but can't, that in the past several years since Mother's death I seem to have achieved very little. My daily routine doesn't change much. Hours merge into days into weeks into months with a similar pattern: I wake, read the paper, sip coffee, breakfast and check email then spend ninety minutes walking the dogs. By that time its lunch time. I eat, straighten up the house (ignoring dust and actual cleaning), do laundry or go grocery shopping, write a while and then its time to get dinner, walk dogs again, catch little TV, and go back to bed to read for an hour or two on Kindle. Boring, eh? Sounds like it as I write it. I have flayed myself emotionally for this. But, what was I supposed to be doing really? I have no real good answer to this question.

But wait: In that same time frame, I cleaned out her house (which was an enormous task for one little matriarch), organized all her financial records and went through forty years of haphazardly piled up papers, found her missing stocks, updated and staged her house, sold her house, reinvested my inheritance, settled her estate, and hand carried her ashes to the little mountain cemetery in Pennsylvania where her family has been buried since 1805.

I supervised the extensive updating and some renovating of my own house and perhaps most importantly I wrote three books. A collection of short stories and a poetry anthology. The first two are published and the third, my first novel, is in edits.

So, maybe I have accomplished a few things after all. On the non accomplishing but life enriching side, I spent the last non committed to something useful funds from my inheritance for a Winnebago. In which Danny and I have taken frequent weekend and day trips and two long trips in the past year. Traveling on the roads with a bathroom and kitchen in the back is educational as well as fun. Dogs can come, too.

So, I will say tonight, "Shut up little annoying in the dark voice. I am not idle and anyone who can be a matriarch and write science fiction is decidedly not ordinary or boring. And dust bunnies contain a multi verse of life even if we can't see it. Leaving them under the chairs and in the corners and over door jams is perfectly all right. So there."

POSTSCRIPT:

Still, as some clever fellow once said, even if you are on the right track you'll get run over if you stand still. While walking one of my three dogs this morning, I found myself thinking about that and wondering if I am indeed on the right track or standing still as regards my writing. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I am dragging my editing heels on the dragon book.

I am doing this, I think, because once done I have to decide what to do with this one. And folks keep telling me I should use it to seek fame and fortune. So, are they right? Do I seek an agent, seek traditional publishing and have to do the ghastly in person book promotions if it does get almost miraculously published? Aren't most of the big box booksellers teetering on financial collapse? Aren't a lot of book buyers like me, rapidly changing their habits and buying most of their books off Amazon and or on Kindle? Would the brief emotional high of seeing my book at Borders or B & N and the approval of those folks who only respect conventionally published writers worth the lengthy emotional cost of getting Tim's book there and the physical misery of promotion? I have to answer, no.

I don't fly commercially or drive self more than an hour away from home unless it is life or death. I hate sleeping in hotels. I hate being started at. I can't do cold call phone calls and early morning meetings. Doing readings, signings, and speeches whatever the time of day would give me migraines, stomach disorders and probably bring back my long vanished Panic Disorder. No quality of life here. I know many people would enjoy all if those things. To me, it would all be purgatory if not Hell.

So, I ask myself: Why did I decide to write the book in the first place? Easy answer. For my grandchildren (and I have three now), children, extended family, and any friends who would enjoy it. If the rest of the world wants to read it, super. So, I think my conclusion is just to finish the project, not worry about the agent and submission thing. Small press it or POD. Put it out as a Kindle book and as an Audio and/or Podio Book. Let the words fall where they may. On fertile ground or parched earth.

To those who see this as a cop out or as less legitimate, I will wave good bye from the window of the Winnebago as I ride off to enjoy the dusty road wherever it may be leading. As a matriarch, my years have earned me the right and excuse to do whatever I want to. Or not do what I don't.

Right now, before the day is over I'd better get to a few edits. Live long and prosper.

April update and musings

April update:

Still sneezing: the pollen continues to drop. Enjoyed Easter Sunday with a visit to Preacher Tom's church, an egg hunt in the front yard with all three grandkids, and dinner with the entire family for a change. Finished the first draft of my first actual novel. Took Laura and her little family to Flagler Beach.

Now, am struggling to edit the novel. That is not as much fun as writing it was and it is impossible to predict how long it is going to take. Think of pulling teeth. Yeah, it is like that without the Novocaine.

I think part of my problem is not knowing what to do with the novel when I do get it in finished form. So, procrastination is nipping at me. I am taking a lot of naps instead of working. Getting headaches. Will I look for a publisher, agent? Self publish? Or just take another nap? Huuummm...

Here's the facts: I hate selling myself or anything else. I hate public speaking and hate commercial airline travel. Hate staying in hotels and calling strangers. Book signings would give me a stomach ache. So, that little voice inside me is whispering that the book is bad, so I can avoid working on it, avoid finishing, avoid decisions, avoid looking for commercial publication. Obscurity is easy. Success would not be.

Am I cursed or blessed? Is it the journey or the destination? Does one bite off the head or butt of a chocolate rabbit first?

I am off for a nap.

Here's some recent pictures from my life from Santa Rosa Beach at Topsail State Park and my sweet grand baby Bailey Brown's first birthday.

Long time no write. I've been busy with:

1.The 51st annual Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival

2.Being abjectly miserable from Spring allergy season....achoo, scratch, scratch...arrggh, congestion!

3.Working for hours every day on the rough draft of my YA novel. I am at page 283 and have two more chapters to write. Then, the fun begins with the content edits. I consider the next phase as polishing a diamond from the rough until it sparkles from many facets. Hopefully.

Live long and prosper. I'll blog again soon. I promise. Ta.

I had a health scare this morning. I woke up with packed sinuses, searing pain in my left eye, and neck pain that radiated down my left side. Being the super allergic humanoid I am, I shrugged and got up. I am used to morning headaches. I cope. So, I got up, grabbed my ever necessary iPhone from the nightstand and made my way to the kitchen where I poured myself my usual mug of coffee, swallowed two decongestants, unrolled the newspaper and sat in my habitual morning paper reading chair in the family room. I looked down at the paper and blinked. My eyes wouldn't focus. I couldn't read. There seemed to be a black hole in my vision. I clicked on my phone and tried to read my facebook page. I couldn't see the words. Then, my left eye felt as if it was exploding with fireworks of light. An arc shaped like the Arabic sickle wiggled and arched.

I made my way to the closest bathroom and peered into the mirror. My pupils were pinpoints and would not dilate. By now, I was feeling a little panicky. What was happening? Was I having a stroke? Was I going blind due to pressure on the optic nerve or something dire?

I grabbed a bottle of eye drops and put some in each eye, swallowed some Ibuprofen with the rest of my coffee, picked up my phone and went back to bed. Tried some calming Yoga breaths. The flashing continued. If it doesn't stop in 30 minutes, I thought, I will have to call for help, have somebody drive me to the hospital. What if I die? What if I go blind?

Two more thoughts zipped past: I haven't had a bath yet and my hair is dirty and if I die I won't be able to finish my book! Then, I thought, If I just go blind I can dictate the book and somebody else can type it. I admit to saying a prayer at that point.

My angel must have been listening as five minutes later everything normalized. Eye fireworks stopped. I could focus my vision. Eyes began to dilate again. Nothing remained but a dull headache. I checked the internet and the symptoms corresponded closest to the aura some people get before a migraine begins. I've had plenty of migraines, but no auras before, although my mother had plenty. So, it was good that I didn't go to the emergency room as I would have been fine by the tine I got there. Guess the caffeine and decongestants and pain medicine did the trick in the nick of time.

The funny part of the story was my concern, not of death or disability but of not finishing my novel. I guess that means I truly am a writer at heart. FOI: I have 250 pages of the rough draft done. Maybe another 30 or 40 to go. So, TTFN, I better get writing. Live long and prosper.

Puppy Snaps

Chilidog, I was looking at your baby pictures today. Couldn't help but smile. Especially at the first.

In this one, you are a roly-poly two months. Your coat, grey and white and black tipped eiderdown. Fluffy as an spring time chick. Your stocky little tan legs appear too short for your black masked head and upright charcoal ears, which alertly point to the deep azure sky above the jungly spiky grass that you hunker down in. Your purple collar is too big for your neck and hangs slightly askew. I can't see it, but I suspect that your favorite red rubber ball is somewhere nearby. Your head is slightly cocked and your coca cola eyes shine with the mischief that I've come to know all too well in the five years since we made each other's acquaintance. In fact you are too cute for the poor description I've written.

If I had been made aware of the puppy finding expedition and had been coerced into riding shotgun, even I might have succumbed to your incredible cuteness, just like your first owned human did, even knowing better as I certainly would have known with my dog breed familiarity. For, you do not buy an Australian Cattle Dog puppy, not unless you have nothing else to do with your days and nights but train. You do not buy a no rules just right, one speed fits all at warp four, boldly going where no one has ever gone to before sort of puppy. A puppy that micro naps but never deeply sleeps. A puppy that defeats crates and pulls the eyelids of sleeping pit bulls with her sharp little milk teeth instead of just letting bully boys lie wherever they want to. A puppy that fears nothing, who leaps forward to catch misfiring bottle rockets on the 4^th of July as they whiz down the street straight at her instead of flying upward into the sky. You do not buy an Australian Cattle Dog puppy when you work full time and go to college at night and already have a cat and two pit bulls and four birds and a rat and a snake or four. Especially a puppy whose kennel name is Big trouble in Little China. There's danger there, Will Robinson.

Well, anyway , Chili dog, you were really as cute as an Easter bunny. The picture proves it. That's how you came into your first owned human's life and then ultimately into mine a few months later. After you'd broken your hip wrestling with the 100 pound pit bull. After you'd eaten her carpet and terrorized the cat. Was it really you that sent Hurricanes Charley, Frances, and Jeanne packing? Or did it just seem so? In any case, I didn't regret taking you in. Well, not for the first ten minutes anyway, until you hopped against the front door and locked me outside. “How long is she staying?” Danny asked for the first three days. But then, something funny happened. Danny fell in love with you. It only took him a week. It took me awhile longer, and, dingo spawn, don't tell anyone, but I fell in love with you, too. Even after all the trash can robbing and the eating of roach baits and the ruined Oriental rugs.

In fact, we both missed you last weekend on our trip to the Panhandle. And, It didn't feel right without your forty four pounds pinning my legs to the mattress last night. No one barked me awake for biscuits this morning, since the other card carrying members of The Mutley Crew are more polite than you. But, I missed you. The house was too orderly and too clean this morning. Nobody rolled in the sand pit outside and then came inside to shake off the dirt all over the floor. There were no fluffy tumbleweeds of fur rolling around the baseboards. I'm nuts, that's why I drove halfway across God's green Orlando earth to fetch you home from the doggie pet resort with the bone shaped salt water pool and the canine play groups and pricy pet grooming as soon as I'd had my coffee. Even though you knocked my car out of gear in front of a policeman, lowered the automatic windows three times with your busy little paw, got your head in the dog food bag, jumped over the back seat at least forty times in forty minutes and turned off the radio and a/c just when I needed to watch for my turn.

Busy and bad to the bone, that's you, little Chilidog. You Tasmanian devil dog, you. Oh cleverest of canines, she who bring chaos in her wake wherever she trots. She who had dingos in her family clan, scratching pesky Australian fleas under widow-making Eucalyptus trees not so long ago as the Kookaburra flies. Welcome home, little blue heeler.

PS: Abby missed you, too. Ginny, I am not so sure about.

This post was written in a Woodstream Writing Workshop in response to a prompt that started "In this one"...

Dame Nancy and The Ides of Farch

Hello bloggers,

Short week for me as I am leaving town on Thursday to make the long boring drive to the edges of Alabama to join the Templars at their upcoming convent and investiture. Yes, the Knights Templar are still around and have been since the late 1100's. These days they leave the "Crusades" to the army and mostly raise money for charities around the world. Did ja know they created the modern banking system in the 1200's? And they accept females these days and I don't gotta join a nunnery either. Of course they call us Dames instead of Chevaliers. But, what's in a name? There is nothing like a dame, eh? So after this week you can officially call me Dame Nancy if you want. Just not to my face.

Actually, my own family has a history with the Templars in the bad old days. One of my great greats on me Mum's side a literal millennium ago was a Count of Anjou who became King of Jerusalem in Outremer. Sounds romantic doesn't it? Fulk of Anjou was also the ancestor of Richard the Lion and Bad old King John of Robin Hood times who was my own nefarious ancestor. Personally, I like being descended from the King who was, as Jack Sparrow would have said,"A really bad egg." Anyway, Chevalier Daniel and I and two of the Mutley Crew will be off on the Parakeet along Florida's scrub pine and swampy version of the yellow brick road for another week end adventure. I'd hope for good weather, but, alas, it is Farch, so I count on nothing.

Speaking of Farch, here's a little poem from Between The Lines:

The Ides Of Farch

By Nancy Wayman Deutsch

Is it February or is it March?

In Florida, it's hard to tell.

Neither Spring nor Winter

a time between Jingle Bells and colored eggs

mind scape of scarlet hearts and roses

morphing into shamrocks and green beer.

Mother nature misbehaving again

such an indecisive coy calendar girl,

changing her agenda from one day to the next

here and there, her azaleas blushing in pink profusion

where brittle branched oaks shiver in the wind.

My lawn is clothed in coco and verdant green

Old Sol playing peek a boo with steely clouds

scowling gray at patch worked earth below.

Have the robins come and gone unnoticed

before drifting yellow pollen blankets all in sight?

Cocooned with book and candle

I wait to be an April fool

longing for steamy sultry days and golden sunsets

my bare toes digging into damp beachy sand

the raucous calling of gulls filling azure sky above.

Live long and prosper. Resistance is futile, anyway.