In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

The trampoline dismantled, waiting on our front lawn to be packed for America; March 2007. Sixteen years ago today my family flew from England to San Francisco; we had left our home in Yorkshire for.... Not exactly our California home, although three of the five of us were born in the Golden State. We came back after eleven years as ex-pats, yet we all felt (and still do to small degrees) that Britain was home. It was a complicated return to America that was for the best, however any of us would give our eyeteeth to go back for varying lengths of stays. Alterations like this could be termed as fixed points within our lives, but seeing that my WIP is definitely going in a sci-fi direction, I've borrowed the Doctor Who phrase for today's title, lol. When flying east, one gains hours, and when going from England to the West Coast of the United States, it's a LONG DAY not merely of travel but of swapping timelines, lifestyles, accents, and temperatures. We changed up SO MANY ...

Other than the lower left corner, a cleared path appears. Of course there's the bed of irises to the left that need to be sorted but that's for another day, lol. Yesterday was sunny, today not so much. I try to be outside when the weather is truly pleasant, so I spent Sunday afternoon weeding the gravel path which leads to the greenhouse. The day became so warm I jettisoned my hoodie, using a very long screwdriver to extricate dandelions and such ilk from between the stones. One small section remains, but I'll get to it during our next spate of sunshine. Better to do a little weeding when I can so my hands remain intact for other pleasures. Which mainly means WRITING! I adore a good love story, have been itching to craft one, and it seems I've succeeded; the word count is improving, and after some odd tangents that were quickly reined in, I'm in a good flow both for how much is being written and the actual prose, lol. When words accumulate, that means I'm enjoyi...

Two examples from two different skeins of yarn where breaks in the colour scheme occur. Very indicative of my current mood, lol. This is a funny novel, for all the hemming and hawing going on. Never before have I written, then purged scenes with somewhat of an abandon. I truly don't know what to make of it, chalking it up to age, grieving, the weirdly long winter (even though it's spring), or my new computer keyboard, which is small but adequate in a strangely truncated manner. I'm enjoying the writing, but the story keeps veering off on tangents I'm not comfortable with, in that too much is being revealed too soon, bleh. Future and Past Me's are steering clear of this manuscript, perhaps because what came before it was so out of the blue, so cathartic, and this prequel is just as outta my backside as any I've ever written. But I am writing, let me restate that, despite restarting a chapter here and there. I'm not getting much else accomplished, other than s...

A colourful WIP that has grown in recent days. Sometimes the best laid plans are scuppered by a spur-of-the-moment stream of writing that seems beneficial. Seems is the key word; sometimes when I crochet, I'll start the initial row with far too many stitches, but after completing an entire row, I end up pulling out all those stitches to make the blanket or scarf less lengthy. Just now I deleted about a chapter's worth of writing, less than I thought needed the ax, which was heartening. I don't lament the missing prose; at times the muse leads one on a wild goose chase just for the fun of it. I could claim writing under the influence of over-the-counter pain meds and heaps of cough drops. My cold remains a force to contend with, although I napped this afternoon, which I never do. Throat is still sore, eyes are gunky, I'm a bit of a mess, like the writing. Not that the actual prose was cruddy, just traveling (or more rightly unraveling) in a direction I'd not foreseen...

Amid the irises, a hyacinth planted last year is blooming! Even better, I'd forgotten I had put it in the ground, hehehe. The grandsons, and their folks, left this morning. A wonderful and wild week was enjoyed amid torrential rain, copious sunshine, warm-ish cloudy days and me installing a new keyboard on my computer. I managed a little writing that one morning was rudely interrupted by lowercase rrrrrrrrrr's springing up in the prose. Fortunately I had a spare keyboard and that corrected the errrrrrroneous letter, lol. Scattered among marvelous memories of my eight and four-year-old grandkids, I am grappling with a small cold, but truly wanted to update this site, in that novelistic ideas have been piling up, although very little sewing occurred; I patched a pair of trousers for each grandkid, plopping a 1.5" hexie onto knees, during which my eldest grandboy noted that my stitching made him carsick, ahem. I promised on his next visit we'd try the machine, and I'...

Crocuses in bloom; spring is truly on its way! I'm not going to claim it's a big groove or a deep groove or a lasting groove. But today I started the prequel to the book I just finished, not that it will be called a prequel, merely Book 1 . Yet right now that's how it feels, perhaps if I continue in this wee groove, I'll think of it as the start to a series. Yikes! Not another series.... LAWL! Now that's a funny thought because when I wrote the previous novel, I was firmly of the belief it was its own little thing. Maybe I can't write small. Maybe I can only gut out sagas and the like. Well, okay. Because I'm feeling good about.... Writing. Feeling like yeah, this's me. I am a writer in the middle of all else. And I haven't felt that way in a long damn time. Maybe one of the reasons I'm feeling creative is I'm eschewing publication considerations. I mean, yeah, it's in the back of my head, but the last chapter of the previous ...

This morning's sky. Well my novel is done. Done is a relative term, in that I reached a conclusion, although perhaps not The End. Or one possible end as to what might eventually be The End. There is a difference, although usually my novels don't conclude with so much ambiguity. Regardless of what happens to it, I can walk away with a semblance of relief that no one was left hanging for dear life, especially not myself. But I wanted to explain a little of why I wrote this book, in case it never travels further than my computer and flash drives. At the end of my published novels, I include a short section called Liner Notes, complements of Silverchimes, a long-lost Last FM buddy who in my very early publishing days suggested such a title for what some authors call an afterwords or similar wrapping up of a story, not that it's related to the actual tale, but more to do with how the yarn went from one small skein to an entire comforter, to which a good book should truly aspire....

Yarn for baby blankets, two of which I have already started for two different blankets, kind of like the current state of the writing. So I have copied and pasted the first draft of the WIP into a new document, titling it the Second Draft. However, the first draft did not reach The End. Hmm. Let me explain.... [But first, I'll say I have NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE, the starting of a second draft without completing a first draft. Heads-up, so to speak, like a disclaimer.] Anyway.... So yeah, first draft not finished, moving right into second draft. Okay, okay, OKAY.... Hmmm. Why am I so, so.... Not exactly troubled, actually not bothered at all although it might seem that way from all this blathering and all caps, etc etc etc. Goodness gracious girl get on with the friggin' post! (Okay, but lemme just say I kinda reached an end of sorts, the end to figuring out how these characters and their plot lines were going from timeline to timeline and that part of it is REALLY COOL!) [But on...

While admiring the back of this fern, whoops I found a spider! Part of this pertains to real life. Part of it associates with my novel. I'm still writing, kind of an altered universe in itself. Also a relief right where I sit. And a wonder especially for my current well-being, compromised by an achy tooth and grateful weariness with our cold, rainy weather. I'm thankful for the precipitation but starting to feel beaten down by the chill, yet I can't begrudge whatever manner the rain falls, ahem. Gotta keep a stiff upper lip and just maintain the word count, which THANK YOU JESUS continues to accumulate. While I'm so appreciative of the rain and the prose, I am starting to feel the effects of such gracious mysteries, lol, which is something else I need to blog about, dude!  So my novel Gracious Mysteries is FREE this week on Smashwords. Hand on heart, I totally forgot about that until I just typed out the previous sentence. I barely have the wherewithal to keep straight...