Category: Ask Me Anything

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the early morning quiet

I’m in the office over an hour earlier than normal this morning because I need to leave early to shoot some senior portraits for a lovely young lady. So early in fact, none of the restaurants down stairs were open when I got here.

The office is dark and quiet and I’m the only one here.  It’s times like these I enjoy, which is also why I love working from home and living alone.  The silence is pristine. and the quiet is very settling…which is good when you have a day as full as this one is going to be.

Over the weekend I spent a lot of time working on Where Shadows Fall, because the ending just wasn’t working for me.  It’s a lot better now, which brings us closer to the place where I get it off to the editor who will make it even better.

I also spent some time reconsidering an old story idea that has been hanging around the back corners of my brain since I was in my twenties.  May see if I can breathe some life into it.  Not sure it has the plot for a full novel though.  Possibly a novella.  We’ll see.

Sounds like the coffee is ready, and I should take advantage of this quiet while I can, so I’ll leave you here, my lovely readers.  I hope your Monday is filled with hope and wonder.

 

 

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knocked down

Ever have a cold hit you so hard, so fast that you went from “everything’s fine” to “somebody shoot me” in a single afternoon?

That’s what happened to me last week.  I went to work on Wednesday feeling pretty okay, if a little tired (but tired is a part of the wicked insomnia I’ve been dealing with) and it was around lunch time when I started to feel a little…off.

By 2pm, I knew I was getting sick and I left work early.  By the time I got home, I was coughing, congested, and so tired I could have laid down on the street for a nap.

I was in bed by 6:30 pm that night, and when I woke up before my alarm, I knew there was no way I was going anywhere but back to bed.  I called in sick both Thursday and Friday and spent those two days plus Saturday and Sunday doing a lot of laying around on my bed and couch.

I was supposed to go into San Francisco on Sunday to shoot senior portraits for the daughter of a friend, but had to postpone that.  I was lost in the fuzzy head brain fog that comes with severe congestion, so no writing or editing got done.

It feels like I lost a week of my life.  But, I finally made it into work this morning.  I’m still beset by a hacking cough and head congestion, but it’s all starting to work it’s way out.  Which is good.  I have a life to get back to!

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international womens day

So, today is International Women’s Day and it makes me wonder what exactly that means and what is the best way to celebrate it?

I mean, some of the stuff I’ve read this morning sounds good: we’ve got women walkouts in Spain, shutting down major commute options, we’ve got protests and such all over as women demand equal pay for equal work and other such things.

I know I’ve been pretty lucky as a woman.  I haven’t dealt with sexual harassment or discrimination, I have always received pay equal to the job I do.  For a long time, that blinded me to the fact that these things happen to other women.  But, here we are in 2018 and we’re still fighting something that should have been defeated years ago.

Can you imagine if women just stepped out, really stepped out…all over the world, for one day, not a single woman did anything to benefit anyone but themselves.  Every woman: every government official, every female on any board, every C-level executive, every manager, supervisor, every garment worker, every transportation worker, every teacher, nurse, doctor, lawyer, judge, every line cook, chef, waitress, receptionist, administrator, every janitor, cashier, delivery person, every wife, mother, sister, daughter…can you picture that?

Look around you for a minute, and imagine your world without women.  We are everywhere. We work hard.  We play hard.  We rise to the occasion.

So ladies, let us rise.  Let us lift up our sisters instead of tearing them down.  Let us fight with them, not against them. Let us rejoice in their victories.  Let us demand, with one voice, that we receive our due: equal pay, equal protections, equal education, adequate healthcare by doctors who will not dismiss our pain because we are women, equal protection from crime and equal investigative power when we are victims of crimes, equal representation.

Power is not give, ladies.  Power is taken.

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where shadows fall

The final book in the Shades and Shadows trilogy has been a slow go for me, not because I was bored of the story or anything like that.  In fact, I still love this story a great deal.  However, in the process of re-writing the first two books several times there were a number of significant changes in the plot that needed to be carried over into the final book.

Making sure I got all of that right took some time, and then I had three possible endings in mind, so I had to make some decisions. This weekend, I wrote the ending, and the “zero draft” as it were, is finished.

That’s not to say that Where Shadows Fall is ready for the editor.  I have a lot of work to do on it before that time. I have at least two pages that contain notes such as “Insert description here” and “needs better dialog” and other such creative bits, and the word count is far below what it needs to be as a result.

Still, it’s a big thing to finish a trilogy.  With any luck I’ll be able to tell you how to get Where Shadows Fall this summer!

But for now, I’m off to the day job and a second cup of coffee.  Happy Monday, Readers!

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dystopia

When I was a teenager I loved dystopian fiction.  I was obsessed with the idea of the end of the world as we know it and how the people left after catastrophe would survive. I wanted to visit all kinds of different worlds with different types of societies and different means of living.

Part of that, for certain, was caught up in my religious outlook and my internal self doubt that I would slip up somehow and miss the rapture so as to be stuck behind on an earth that was living in the tribulation period, but aside from that, I was drawn to the plucky upriser, the person who stood up to the dystopia they found themselves in and rather than submitting to their fate, they fought back, they carved out their own place or stood up to an unjust system, rebelled against a corrupt government.

I guess I still am.  I just never suspected that dystopia would be so easy to establish.  No global calamity was needed, just a government run by people more concerned with money than the well being of its citizens.

Heh, when I first wrote the first draft of Through Shade and Shadow almost six years ago now, I considered it’s political plot to be too far fetched.  No one would believe America could be torn apart that fast, even with an outside influence at work behind the scenes.

Now, here we are in a land where the president and congress are more concerned with corporate welfare and the well being of millionaires and billionaires than they are for the rest of the citizens, where safety regulations are swiftly becoming a thing of the past, where cities can poison their own people with lead with no consequences, where children can be mowed down with guns no other civilized country allows in the hands of its citizens and over the grieving of their mothers we as a nation shout about our rights to own these death machines.

But, just liked in all of those dystopian stories I read as a teenager, someone is rising up. Heroes are emerging. Resistance is beginning.

And just like in those stories, those heroes are teenagers.  I know this plot.

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coupling

Today is a day in American culture that seems to scream that you must be paired up, that without a life partner who can shower you with expensive presents on this arbitrary day in February, you don’t matter.

I don’t begrudge those who are happily coupled (or triaded or quadra-coupled, or whatever number works for you), and if you chose to “celebrate” good on you, have fun, don’t put yourself in debt, etc.

Personally, I am generally happy without a partner.  Days like today there’s this false desire to have someone who would bring me flowers or jewelry, even though I know that for the most part, I don’t really want either.  I’m allergic to most flowers, I can’t have candy and I don’t even wear the jewelry I already have…and if I’m honest, I feel nearly all of those things are a waste of money that could be saved to give me what I really would rather have: travel with someone I love.

In other news, I posted a snippet of my new novel-in-progress over on my Patreon this morning, for patrons only.  I’m thinking this weekend, I may do a brief video over there. You should come get in on the fun.  Just a dollar a month gets you in.  Higher support levels bring better rewards.

That’s all for now, Readers!

 

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working writer at work

Some days it’s hard to be a writer who has a day job.  Inevitably, my muse gets chatty while I’m trying to write some technical instructions or what have you.  Today is one of those days.  The main character in my blood witch story has been really chatty the last few days and if I could be home writing, I would be.

Instead, I’m in the office. You know, the daily struggle to pay the bills.

Speaking of paying the bills, do you know about www.patreon.com? It’s a nifty little place for people who love art (music, words, visual arts, more) to help the artists they like.  You pledge to pay a certain amount per month and in return, you get various goodies that can stem from behind the scenes looks at work in progress, blog posts for patrons only, and up to actual physical books.

As I build audience, I’ll add in some fun video clips (maybe me reading snippets or short stories), and other fun things.  If you’re interested in supporting me, my patreon can be found here: www.patreon.com/natalie.  Special access begins at only $3/month, though once a month I will also give the $1/month folks a sneak peek.

And, with that plea for your support, I must go back to my cup of coffee and the day job.  Those bills need paying!

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coming back strong

I’ve spent most of the first month of 2018 sick.  I caught a cold at New Years that became a sinus infection that did not respond to the first two antibiotics we tried.  I just finished my course of clarithromycin yesterday.  I’m still super congested, but feeling so much better!

Which means I can begin to focus on writing again.  This has me excited.  I’m nearly done with the zero draft of Where Shadows Fall, the finale of the Shades and Shadows series, and I’m five chapters in on a new novel, and I have two short stories in the works!  It’s a busy time to be me, I guess.

I will be focusing on building my Patreon in the coming months as well, hoping I can use it to source enough money to work on getting audio books recorded.   I’m still working out what exactly to offer over there, but it will include some behind the scenes looks at work I’m doing, possibly so vlogs of me talking about writing, and other fun things, including patron-only giveaways.

That said, I should get on over there to post something for my patrons, and then get back to work.  The words won’t write themselves!

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happy new year

Happy New Year Readers!

As I said in my previous post, I’ve had a friend visiting from England this week, and we’ve been off doing a bit of site seeing.

My friend has been wanting to get to the Winchester Mystery House for the last 13 years, so of course I had to make sure she got there.  We had a really pleasant afternoon there, starting with the regular mansion tour, then taking the new “Explore More” tour, which takes you to a number of rooms that had previously been closed to the public.  Of course, they’ve done some refurbishing since I was last there, and they’ve had a movie shooting in the house this last year, which will be coming out in February.

After that we drove down to Monterey and wandered around the aquarium.  We were scheduled to go whale watching the next day, but were both in enough physical pain to scrub that plan.  Instead, we drove up the coast toward home, pausing here and there to get out and look at the shoreline.  My camera loved it.

We had a quiet new year’s eve, staying home and watching movies.  Instead of going out and partying, we stayed in and planned our shenanigans for next year.  I turn fifty in September this year, and have decided I want to tour Italy!  I am super excited! We will start in Rome and end in Paris where we will spend a few days at Disneyland Paris and visiting the various sites.

We were in bed by 10pm. Party animals we are!

Yesterday, we ventured someplace I’ve wanted to go for a while, the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.  The science geek in me LOVED it!  We visited the rain forest and the aquarium, the earthquake zone, the swamp and it’s amazing albino alligator, then there were penguins! All in all, it was an amazing day, even if we were both exhausted when it was over.

Cal Academy of Science -68

We’re now on the wind down of our vacation time.  My friend leaves to go home tomorrow, so today, we are watching favorite episodes of Star Gate and doing laundry so that she doesn’t have to do laundry when she gets home.

All in all, it was a wonderful way to start a new year!  I hope all of you were having a wonderful start to an amazing year to come!

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happy holidays

I hope that all of you who celebrate some form of wintery holiday at this time of year are enjoying that time with family and loved ones.

I have the very good fortune of playing host to a friend from England for the holidays.  She arrived the Wednesday before Christmas, and will leave the Wednesday after New Years.

We started with some average San Francisco touristy things, like the San Francisco Dungeons and the cable car ride from Fisherman’s Wharf into Union Square.  I introduced her to our family’s Christmas chaos, and then we went to Muir Woods where we slow walked in the woods with every other tourist in northern California.

Yesterday was a rest day, which is to say we went shopping.  And today, my visiting friend finally got to see the Winchester Mystery house in San Jose.  I say finally, because she has been trying to get there for 13 years, but something always got in the way.

Currently, we are comfortably ensconced in a hotel room in Santa Cruz as a starting point for our journey down to Monterey tomorrow.

It’s been fun, exhausting and pain inducing day.  It’s tough touristing like a teenager when you’re pushing fifty and have chronic pain issues!

Tomorrow should be more of the same because we’ll be visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Saturday we’re going whale watching.  By the time we get home, we should both be ready to sleep for 24 hours.

Whatever you and yours are up to, I hope it’s half as fun.

*Picture above is one I shot in the Muir Woods on Tuesday.