Chicks-n-Scratching

Archive for the ‘Musings’ Category

I love love love autumn. It is normally my favorite season. Now since I left the mountains, I approached this season with some fear. I mean, my mountains are a memory . No more hillsides and peaks full of color. Back in Appalachia, there was a festival called the Apple Harvest that I used to love but then began to dread. It was always too damn hot. Fall comes later further south. So I was withholding my anticipation in this new Northern state, holding my breath.

So far, I can’t say that I am terribly disappointed. I have yet to find that country lane where the fall colors embrace you like a lover’s arms But there is color here. Cherry and Maple trees are more abundant here than the typical oaks and walnuts I am used to so the colors are a bit different.  More reds and oranges than burgundy and golds. The colors is not so much HIGH and it is WIDE spread. You can see it for miles, stretching out like a quilt.

I haven’t yet felt that nip of Jack Frost’s breath but it is early yet. I am willing to wait a few weeks.

So far though, something are the same. School is in session and I am being buried alive in winter plans for holiday parties and plays. Pumpkin stands are appearing. Halloween seems to be a bigger deal here and the kids are planning their costumes. They are at an age where I have little say except the ultimate veto. So far I will have a soldier awarded a purple heart and maybe an Indian scout. Spawnetta is feeling the magic again too. Here costume ages are longer apparently and she and her friends are working on their own group ideas. I shudder there but warned her there will be no street hootchie mama’s leaving this house.

I have already made the first batches of homemade soups and baked goods. Cherries are HUGE here and not really one of our favorites but pumpkin rolls, apple pie and monkey bread are high on the list. Menu requests for things suck as chicken noodle soup, dumplings and roast turkey are being requested. French onion soup and grilled swiss/pumpernickel is a common request, although I prefer to hold that to much later in the season. Begging for venison jerky has already began. Oatmeal and cinnamon rolls have replaced cold cereals. I love this cooking season.

THe shorts are packed away (for the most part) and the sweats and sweaters have come out. Basketball and football games are talks over dinner rather than swimming and catching fireflies. Designs for Jack-o-lanterns have been scribbled and are still in progress. Damien has even started his Christmas list.

And my word count is back in full swing. I hate summer for writing. I get very little done and actually plan for it now so it is not so panic inducing. I am hitting the thousands or words daily rather than the mere hundred here and there of before. We are no longer sweating to death. I even broke out my slippers, the fuzzy ones that look like chit but fit oh so well.  Coffee now tastes better, hot chocolate has made an appearance in my grocery cart and Hubby is hinting at things like needing to finish clearing the garage of the summer-rain toys so the vehicles can be moved inside.

Yeah autumn is coming. We havent had frost YET but it is coming. Temperatures have dipped to the mid 30s. It is a matter of weeks and then, the magic of Fall will fully descend. There is an apple festival here as well as a few other local village festivals. We are looking forward to each one, to find a new special time to enjoy.

Autumn. Bring it on. I can’t wait.

So Inez and I were talking the other day – SHUT UP! We talk! – and I was whining about being woefully uncreative and not having ideas for a blog for this week. Jokingly, Inez suggested I do a post on sex toys. Well, I did a T-13 on my other blog on sex toys, so I didn’t really want to repeat myself, but I do loooove the idea of sex toys. So what to do?

Well, I thought I might mention a few stories FEATURING sex toys. Yeah. Now you wanna know, don’t you? You’re all…oooooohhhh…. tell me more, Elise!

Fine. I’ll tell you more.

One of my very favorite stories featuring a VARIETY of toys employed for a laundry list of purposes is Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series. Okay, maybe it’s not a single book, but really it is one story. Now, I have to warn you that these stories involve some very, very edgy stuff, and the toys are correspondingly… terrifying. Blades for blood play, clamps and hard edged pain toys, a truly terrifying dildo in the third book of the series. And yet…. I love this series. But certainly not for the faint of heart.

The Switch by Diane Whiteside. Now, I’ll be honest here. I pretty much hate everything else I’ve ever read by Whiteside. But this book… wow. Again, many toys – whips and crops and nipple clamps, oh my! But the story is lovely, and the toys are more integral to it than most.

Mallory Rush’s Love Play features some of the most beautiful scenes with sex toys. The hero (at least partially Chinese in heritage) uses traditional Chinese brushes, feathers, and a number of other tactile things as sex toys.

The anthologies Captivated and Fascinated both have multiple stories featuring toys. Bertrice Small uses dildos and various furniture to good effect, while Thea Devine uses nipple adornment and modified chastity belts.

I’ve read quite a few contemporaries which mention vibes or dildos, and a few that actually feature them. Harlequin Blaze has a tendency to use them fairly frequently.

How about you? Any good reads with toys?

So, my daughter’s bus stop is literally right across the street from our house. We’re in suburbia, not any sort of rural atmosphere. But that bus stop harbors wildlife aplenty. These pics aren’t from the bus stop, but they’re the same animals!

What are some things we’ve seen at the bus stop? I’m glad you asked….

Bunnies!

Marbled salamander (saw this one on Monday)

Smooth green snake

squirrels

red-tailed hawk (in the trees at the bus stop)

sharp-shinned hawk (in the trees at the bus stop)

chipmunks

bald eagle (flying overhead)

We’ve also seen turkey vultures, black vultures, deer, and various other critters. It’s evidently a busy place. Who knew?

At church this week, we had a lovely young lady do a glorious solo for us. She’s been singing at our church for ages, and the associate pastor pointed out that she is now a rising senior at the Boston Conservatory. I nearly fell out of my chair, as I could have sworn we only sent her off to Boston last year. Where does the time go?

I have noticed that, as I get older, my sense of time is more shortened. By that I mean that the time seems to go faster. Do you remember when you were a kid and it seemed like eons until you could go to your friend’s party in two weeks? And summer seemed to last for EVER? Yeah, I remember that, too.

But somehow, some way, the time got away from me. Now the summer has flown past, and deadlines are on top of me that I thought were miles off. Things that seem to have happened yesterday happened months or years ago.

Any minute now, I’m going to start talking about the “good old days” and telling those kids to get off my lawn.

Too late. I already told them to get off my lawn. *sigh*

Great news – the DH has a new job! Hooray!

The new job, however, will necessitate a move for us. And in preparation for his starting that job (on Monday!), we’ve a lot of things to do. So, I spent Tuesday neck deep in medical, dental, vision, and life insurance. Short and long-term disability. Accidental Death and Dismemberment. Long Term Care. Flexible Spending accounts. Retirement plans. All that benefits stuff you have to sort out when you start a new job (or, in this case, when DH starts a new job).

I also spent a chunk of the day hunting around looking for short-term housing options, since it’s a beastly commute from here and it makes more sense for DH to do a weekly commute (M-Th nights there, F/S/S nights home).

Oh. And somewhere in there I edited two chapters of the joint project with Emily Ryan-Davis, uploaded a syllabus for a course I’m teaching in the fall, worked on two other syllabi for courses I’m teaching.

Did four loads of laundry, emptied the sink of dishes, made most of a gazpacho, took out the recycling.

DH was busy riding herd on the munchkin and taking stuff to his parents (i.e., getting it out of our house) and returning with a lawn mower (which will hopefully work, since ours died). He also cleaned the cat boxes this morning, and that cannot be overstated.  Today he goes up to the new job and starts all the paperwork and gunk, gets to meet the other members of the team. Then we have dinner with friends and we’ll be watching their kids tonight (in exchange, they’ll watch Munchkin next week while I’m teaching).

Busy? No. Why do you ask?

I’m supposed to blog today and damned if I can think of a topic. I’m hip deep in edits (which I actually love) and trying to get the kids set for back to school (not until Sept. 7th which is cruel parent abuse I think). Since I can’t think of a topic, you are all subject to the rambling of my mind.

I need to get rid of my children so I can do a deep clean. I can’t do this with people under foot and it requires a couple hours solid. I need to wipe down walls, clear out closets, etc. I want to shampoo my carpets. Must wait until school is in session and this bugs me.

My space bar keeps sticking and I get random capital letter streams in things I write then have to go back and correct it. It’s annoying.

I’m out of sugar and need to go to the store for some. I don’t want to get dressed. I wish there was an instant grocery delivery but we don’t even have pizza delivery here.

Ginny Glass and I have a blog due for the Smutkateers that we haven’t been able to write! Just trouble in hooking up. *must due this*

Why do socks not mate themselves?

Hello, my name is Kate and I’m addicted to Netflix.

Yes, I realize this is an odd sort of addiction, but as a movie junkie, I feel it’s my right to exploit the fact I can get unlimited movies per month/week/day at one low, low price.

If I sound like a commerical. I apologize. But darn it, I just love the fact that these little nuggets of fun come to my house and all I have to do is send them back to get more. Or if I’m so inclined I can stream instantly. How awesome is that? So my love of sci-fi and fantasy, and romantic comedies and foriegn films and movie adaptations of famous novels can all be satisfied at the touch of a few buttons. That’s just so cool.  Not only that, but it brings my husband and I together.

In the evenings, after he gets home from work and we are having our late dinner, we like to put in movies or old sitcoms and watch. We’re the type of people who will stop a movie to sit and discuss something about the film right then and there. More than once we’ve pushed pause because a topic has started a discussion that we just couldn’t wait to have. It’s how we communicate, connect and share.

One of my favorite sitcoms of all times was the old series, Barney Miller. Loved it as a kid and young teen. Lately we’ve been getting the seasons and laughing our asses off at the material. It’s really timeless. It’s odd how some of the topics, politics, budget cuts and corruption are still things that are going on today. The names might have changed, but the situations are the same. Several times Dave and I have looked at each other, shaken our heads and said, “sounds familiar, huh?” – And that’s just the subtext. The writing is so spot on and tight, anyone writing series comedy today should really study this show on craft. It’s just how it’s done. So good.

Then there are the movies.

It’s no secret my husband has a thing for Dame Judith Dench. He’ll watch anything with her in it, and so when I looked through movie adaptations of classic novels, I found a movie (mini-series) made for the BBC with her called Cranford.  Since it’s a Regency (maybe Victorian- not sure now) era story, he wasn’t too sure about it at first. Once he saw she starred in it, he was like…”Oh….” (This is kind of a sigh that one reserves for when they discover their favorite aunt is coming to visit and bringing presents.) – We sat down to watch the first disk (that’s one drawback to Netflix – they only send one disk at a time so you have to wait between episodes to see the entire series.) and it was such a sweet and endearing…and yes, sad movie that it instantly went down as one of our all time favorites. And to think, we would not have known about it had I not been browsing that particular sub-heading and found it.

Our queue is about 500 strong, and that number never seems to go down. Every time we get it down by a few, new movies come out or we’ll think to look for something else, and the number just goes up. I’m not the only one with this problem. I’ve never met anyone whose queue isn’t maxed out.

All I have to say is whoever came up with this particular way to distribute rental videos was bleeding brilliant. I only wish I had got in on their stock at the beginning.

What’s your odd and quirky, yet harmless addiction?

-Kate

I recently noticed that I tend to include meals in my writing. This was particularly evident to me after reading Louisa Edwards’ two Recipe for Love books, which amount to food porn with a romance backbone. Hooray!

But, to return to my point, I noticed that I include food a lot in my writing. It figures prominently in Trusting Destiny, more as a background element in This Fire and Twice as High. So it made me think about why I feel compelled to include food and meals in these stories.

I’ve come to the conclusion that for me, food represents nurturing. It’s caring for someone and making sure they get what they need, and I find that very attractive, so I include it in my stories. But, there’s a whole other level – the foodie level.

I will admit, happily, that I am, in some ways a foodie. Well, not really. Not in the sense of being snobby about it. I just love food. The smells, the textures, the tastes, the visual stimulation, the sound of it as it cooks. It’s a total sensory experience. Which, I think, is another reason to include food with your romance. But, again, I am wandering from my point. My point on this is that writing about food allows me to venture into food fantasy and to share with my readers some of the wonderful finds I have made.

For example, in This Fire (in the Hearts Afire duology), Seth and Eden go to dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant. Now, I realize that most people probably haven’t ever eaten Ethiopian food, but let me assure you that it is seriously tasty stuff. The meal is served family style, with small mounds of food dotting a large piece of soft, spongy sourdough called injera, with more injera alongside. You don’t use any utensils. Instead, you tear off small pieces of injera and use it to scoop up bits of meat and vegetables. Fun and ridiculously yummy. But where else would I get to tell people about that? Oh. Right. Here.

In any case, food plays a big part in my stories – and in my life. What about you? Do you have food stories?

A thread on Romance Divas made me think this week. The topic: the worst book you’ve ever read.

What interested me about this discussion was not only the fact that some peoples’ worsts reads were others’ keepers, but also the reasons the readers found stories to be such clunkers.

The reasons, I think, are instructive.

Inconsistency

In character, in setting, in dialogue. This gets a bit to the discussion going on at Dear Author about how accurate historicals need to be (do you really want to read about how badly they smelled or how wretched the teeth were, or how drafty and uncomfortable the living quarters could be?). But it also gets to inconsistency of plot, and of character. If your plot is headed one direction and then, inexplicably, takes a hard right turn, that’s going to leave a reader hanging out wondering what happened. If your character is supposed to be virginal and innocent, having her giving blow jobs to random guys in the hall is going to throw the reader off. There are all kinds of ways to be inconsistent, but it boils down to the expectations of the reader. If something in the book throws the reader completely off stride, it’s hard to come back and convince them to love the story.

Unsympathetic hero/heroine

It’s one thing to have unsympathetic villains. I mean, they’re supposed to be the bad guy, so you can get away with that. But the hero? The heroine? That’s a fast train ride to Hateville, right there. In romance, especially, the reader wants to like the characters. They want to enjoy going through the adventure and angst with them. It’s very hard to do that if the characters are unsympathetic. On the one hand, you can have characters which skirt the line – characters who aren’t angelic or even particularly good, but are sympathetic. One of my favorites like this is Linda Howard’s John Medina. He’s not really a nice guy. He does what he thinks is necessary and doesn’t have any real guilt about doing it. He shot and killed his own wife because she was about to cause catastrophic damage to US security. He isn’t tortured about it, he just sees it as necessary. Because he isn’t tortured about it, he could easily become unsympathetic. But Howard manages to make his priorities so clear, and to make his relationship with the heroine so intense, he never quite crosses the line into unsympathetic. Some authors really like skirting the lines here. Rhage in JR Ward’s Lover Eternal does a lot of line skirting. Enough line skirting that it really pissed off some people.

Breaking the rules.

There are some rules in Romancelandia. Rules like Happily Ever After (or at least Happy for Now), or like not killing off the main characters (this is how Nicholas Sparks likes to think he gets out of being a romance author). Or like the hero and heroine aren’t supposed to cheat on each other on screen. Now, with menage and open relationships, it’s not cheating. You avoid this problem because of the expectations of the characters and the openness of the interaction. But, no cheating. When authors break these rules, you often default to the numero uno rule above – veering off the reader’s expectations. And we already talked about that.

Crappy Craft

This is the most technical of the reasons, I think, and the hardest to pin down, while simultaneously being the easiest to recognize. Sloppy writing, repetition, bad flow, broken rhythm, stilted dialogue, hosed up sentence structure, odd word choices, bizarre imagery. Any of these things can interrupt the reading experience, and when enough of them stack up, the reading becomes painful. This is, I think, a bigger problem now than ever before, simply because there are more and more books being published – through the big houses, through small press, through e-pubs, through self-publishing and through vanity publishing. Many of these books are good. But there are going to be a lot of stinkers. And when the stinkers are bad enough, it can taint everything around it. But, the point here is that basic craft skills can and should be employed. And if they aren’t, the book is going to smell. Badly.

There you go – four big categories of why books stink. But flip them on their head, and you get four reasons good books are good. And that is the lesson for today, grasshopper.

As you read this,  I can nearly guarantee I am not actually sitting in front of the computer. I can guarantee this because Munchkin is going to camp today, and I have to drive her out there and check her in. After that, I may dance naked in my yard in celebration. Okay, not really. But I probably will treat myself to the day of sloth I missed yesterday.

In case you missed it, yesterday was my birthday. And Monday was release day for Twice as High. I had a bit of a party for myself and readers, giving stuff away. Oh, you  did miss it? Gosh. I’m sorry.

Fine, comment on this post and I’ll chuck you into a drawing for the end of this week for winner’s choice of a backlist title. Freebies!

To continue the theme of doing stuff, after my day of sloth today (and, really, do you actually believe I will be able to avoid turning on a computer? Well,  I suppose it’s possible. Are there World Cup games? Maybe Wimbledon? I might can manage to avoid the computer), Thursday is hard core fiction lockdown. No Munchkin. No distractions. Just bust it out.

Starting Friday, I’m participating in a blog hop. The tour will feature a whole mess of eye candy and a metric ass-ton of prizes. These are always such fun – a great way to check out new authors.

I’ll retrieve Munchkin on Friday evening, and then I will be working on figuring out what a summer schedule looks like for us. Won’t that be fun?

What are you doing this week?