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In the interest of pretending I don’t care, no, that friendly email I received from Mystery Agent this morning in response to my news that I was posting things off didn’t give me that thrill of excitement and woohooness. Nope. Uh-uh.

Gods, what a rank amateur we’re dealing with here…

Status then. FYI, Mystery Agent isn’t the only agent with Substance. Another agent still has the full read, and is still considering the manuscript. Trisha Telep also has to reject me properly yet. And there is YET another agent I can submit to, should I get a hankering.

Also, Abby and Vince’s little story is out at Drops of Blood. Wanted to support their first efforts as an Urban Fantasy ‘zine, even though cash is not an issue there.

***

What next? Obviously, Hulk Hercules.

I want second draft done before I take my wrestling road trip to Chicago on the 15th. Then I’ll come back and tweak it with what I’ve found out. I’ll be looking for some readers once I’m done with the second (and viewable) draft, before the tweaks. Kizmet, you’re in for sure, and I’ve got your email address from before.

Anyone else? I’ll need it back no later than November 25th, before all turkey breaks loose, so I can send it by its due date.

I should have my professorial paper proposal done as soon as Mr. Iwahara gets me his short bio. I’ll have to nag starting Monday, maybe. I know there will be additions to that in January.

Two more winter projects if there’s time with HH:PW. One is a story for the Interfictions annual based on the last days alive of Susy Twain. I would love to get that in. I also have wig making articles to get off to AniCoz.

Then I intend to begin a short story barrage! I want to go through some old short stories and update them, send them out, and write a couple of new stories. All this with an eye of applying to a writing workshop for professional development.

Of course, plans are totally subject to change, based on any trains that pull into the station. We writers must be flexible.

I need to decide on my next long term project. It was going to be YA vampire killers. I’m not sure if after HH:PW, I’ll want something deeper to do. Maybe it’s time for Dead Grrrlz after all. Who knows what the mood will be.

So, more for me, this post, than you. Do you guys like projecting yourself into some far flung, pre-planned future of what you’ll be writing?

Catherine

389 / 389 (100.0%)

Well, that’s a wrap. Now to write the accompanying missives, and get this back off to the agent.

We return you to all Hercules, all the time.

Keep your fingers crossed for me! I’m sure the suspense will kill me for some time to come, and I’ll have to pretend that I don’t mind. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! I mean, we’re cool…

Catherine

Weird freaky day at work where contacts are almost all not available. What is the likelihood of having this many irons in the fire, and having them almost all stymied by needing feedback/parts from others.

***

Snuck out to write for 1.5 hours at coffee shop. We’re almost through the Substance revision.

375 / 389 (96.4%)

***

Heartbreaker! However, I can’t finish. I must go back to school for a couple of meetings with teachers. Then book group. Maybe later, perhaps?

Catherine

I dunno. The weather must be changing.

I lost Saturday and Sunday to both too much running around for others and my arm. I intend to get back in the saddle today.

Meanwhile, what I do have is the next installment of Blood is Thicker than Water.

Catherine

My house smells like beef tenderloin and tarragon leaves. Michelle and Mark are coming out for Klarion birthday dinner, which is usually Halloween, but they have candy to give out, and we have candy to give out, and there’s Icon, so I figured we’d have it early. Therefore, today has been big time cooking and prepping.

I talked this morning with Sam at Windy City Pro Wrestling. It looks like I’ll be in Chicago on November 15th interviewing wrestlers and watching matches. I’m hoping to head out to Jane Addams on the 14th if they’ll let me in, and as soon as I hear back from the Brookfield Zoo, I’ll try to work that in too. Then I can tweak my research into the finished (by that point) draft of Hulk Hercules.

Sam was fantastic and enthused on the phone. He told me a little about his personal history, how he’d trained with Randy Savage and Jesse Ventura, how he’d wrestled in Japan for a while. I’m kind of excited about talking to the guys.

I regret that some of you will be running around at WindyCon in Chicago that very weekend, but I’d best be getting some work done. 🙂

So, if I’m lucky, there will be some time to write later. If not, tomorrow for sure.

I leave you with the coolest Barack Obama shirt I’ve seen so far. Bryon and I ordered ours for election day.

You can get this at stylinonline.com. God bless Alex Ross!

Catherine

Finally! Today I fell into the scenes I wrote in Hulk Hercules. I see the need to check in with Tony and Bianca before I write El Toro, so I will add in some more new material. We are now longer than the first rough draft.

Here’s the scene measure of the Herc-o-meter.

20 / 43 (46.5%)

***

Substance: Dangerously close to the finish. Heavily revising, activating, and trimming Errol’s trial. Trying to sharpen everyone’s personality.

343 / 387 (88.6%)

And that’s enough for tonight.

Catherine

Sharing information, as I’ve just sent a story off.

Drops of Crimson

Catherine

FYI, Hairy Pig is what Tony’s friends call one of the wrestlers in HH:PW.

Just got off the phone with Lewis, who is in charge of the locker room at Windy City wrestling. Tomorrow after 9 am I have to call Sam de Caro, the owner. If that’s not the name of a wrestling promoter, I don’t know what is. The guy in Hulk Hercules is Sal. Kind of close, yes? At any rate, they have matches tomorrow night, so we’ll see what I can get out of Mr. de Caro. It could be a busy day.

I also recalled Jane Addams and hope the principal calls me back. Still waiting to hear from the Brookfield Zoo. It was never this slow, cobbling together the grad school research. At least I don’t remember it being this difficult to cobble.

***

Instructor interview in 45 minutes. Then, I’m out of here to go write. I’m going to baby the arm until then. I cleaned the kitchen last night, and there’s, well, there’s fall out. Six weeks. I function mostly, but I still can’t properly dry my hair or scrub a counter, apparently, without some implications for future comfort.

From the woman who thinks Patience is a Puritan name,

Catherine

Armed with a new outline of the classic car/hamburger contest sequence, knowledge of a 68.5 Red Mustang Convertible, and a review of the labors of the man-eating mares and Geryon, she was ready to write the next two scenes of Hulk Hercules…tomorrow. 🙂

Give me good gumbo, subconscious. Give me good gumbo.

Catherine

Lately, I’ve been feeling like Jim Hines’ publicist, which is not a job I want or am particularly well qualified for. My own writing career certainly needs a publicist, so I have to ride that pretty hard. Still, it’s hard not to advocate for a writer you admire when your local convention asks you who should be the guest at their next convention, or when you find their writing, both fiction and non-fiction, engaging and delightful. I’m happy to be the right person in the right place at the right time for so deserving and talented an individual.

Which brings us to this entry. Every fall, about this time in October, my husband Bryon gets stuck in town doing his educational duty, consulting with the parents of his chemistry students. It’s part of the teacher life, and it’s a good part. Teachers and parents working together toward a student’s greater good and advanced knowledge. Just thinking about it makes me all halcyon.

How does this tie into Jim Hines? Wait for it! As the teaching spouse, now a college professor rather than on the front lines, I can occasionally get stuck in town on parents teachers nights. Bryon and I commute in together, and we try not to break that rule too much, even though we have two cars. It’s one of my commitments to being green. Monday I went home because of a variety of errands we missed this weekend. That meant that I was determined to not use two cars Wednesday.

And so, I was in town for an awkwardly long time Wednesday. I had to come into work because the department retreat sucked the marrow out of my Monday work day, but Monday’s work was accomplished quickly. I plowed through argument papers for today’s conferences, talked to a variety of offices, and focused on getting tasks around for my work study. I was finished by 11 am, and then I ran off to do my usual Wednesday/Friday activity of writing.

Still getting to the Jim Hines part. Bear with me. I wrote. I wrote for three hours. I worked on both projects. I turned my brain to writer oatmeal. I took a break and ran errands. Still staring at 3 hours, I wrote even more, and finally, I had about an hour to kill. No creative capacity remained. I wanted to do something meaningful with what intellectual capacity I had left.

The book I’m reading right now is Lament by Maggie Stiefvater. It was at home on my coffee table. I figured that I would have more than enough to keep busy, so it didn’t make it into my bag of tricks. Silly me, I hadn’t counted on being efficient or burning out. That’s when I remembered that I had Goldfish Dreams on my laptop from ebooks, having just purchased it during their sale. I read a hundred pages or so.

Goldfish Dreams is Jim Hines “real” book. You can hear him talk about it from time to time at his journal. It is a collector’s item, a small press book that is rare. I appreciate it that you can get the story through ebooks, and I wanted the story. You see, there’s something you need to know about me, and why I would want to read this particular book. I am an incest survivor. And I want to thank Jim profoundly for taking the time to write a book about an incest survivor.

This could be the point where you turn me off, and soon you can, because I’m going to cut in a moment. Rest assured, this entry is NOT a confessional. Books like Goldfish Dreams give a venue for people to talk about their own similar experiences, and it’s in part why we need books like it. If you’re a victim, and you’ve never talked about your experiences, the model of someone doing so in fiction is a great place to start.

I am keenly aware of how writing the 5 words above color your perceptions of myself, my family, and how we all fit in society. Some of you, in spite of your best efforts, are thinking those thoughts. I am also very aware that I am in no way responsible for the sins of my family, and that I am a victim. You should know that I am the poster child for recovery. 🙂 I have chosen long ago not to let this misfortune in my life guide my life, as much as I can, and to be there for others who have experienced sexual violence. Unlike Jim, I’ve never been a counselor. I am a teacher and a strong role model for getting on with life, and not living in my victimization. I have been an active participant in The Clothesline Project. And I’m damned handy with our campus counselor phone numbers.

Continue reading “Goldfish Dreams”