4th of July

This was the first year I was able to watch fireworks in my hometown in quite a while.

2008 - Yamaguchi, Japan. If you remember, I was in Japan where my husband and I had to buy our own fireworks for a mini 4th of July celebration.

2007 - Gumi, South Korea. I honestly don't remember what we did. Aside from we were in Korea and nearing the end of our stay there.

2006 - Mankato, MN. This was the year we graduated from college and went to visit our friends who weren't into watching fireworks. Even though I thought the Mankato ones were better.

2005 - Mankato, MN. I think we celebrated the 4th at our appartment. Or at least we tried to. Maybe. Honestly, I don't remember.

The last time I know for sure that we watched fireworks here was in 2000, the summer after we graduated from high school and our first summer together. We tried to watch them from a small boat on the river. Unfortunately we had too many people on the boat for its size and not enough life jackets.

But this year we were finally able to watch them at home again. And either I don't remember them being so good or they increased their fireworks budget, but I was really impressed with them this year. Then again, maybe it had something to do with being glad to be home, and glad to watch the fireworks with my husband, my son, and my puppy. Especially since I'm pretty sure Baby Nate enjoyed watching them just as much as we did. And my puppy didn't get scared until towards the end of the grand finale.

All in all, it was a pretty good time.

Also, my husband and I wore our yukata. And one person that we passed while crossing the street on our way to the Levee Park actually recognized them for what they were. And said, "What beautiful yukatas."

A Bithday Present to Myself

I'm finally revising Butterfly Mask with the "if it doesn't fit with the story, chop it--don't worry if you like it, just get rid of it" attitude and so far it seems to be helping.

A few key factors are helping me with it, though.

1. I want to have it finished by my birthday, which is only a few days away. And for some reason, I tend to get pretty motivated the closer I get to a deadline. And part of me just really wants to get this done since I've been working on it off and on since 2003.

2. I was complaining about how I didn't know "what the book's about" to my husband. As usual, he was able to provide some much needed insight. And even though I'm just working with "what's on the page" (like one of our English teachers always told us ot do), it feels like the story's going in a completely new direction. What's best is that I don't have to add tons of new writing to get it there. (Weird how that works, huh?)

Apparently I've Been Busy

Well, I know I've been busy. I mean, I have a little baby who was just a few weeks old when I last posted and is now two and a half months old. But still. I guess you don't realize how quickly time's going by when you think you posted "not too long ago" and find out that it's been over two months since you last posted.

But don't worry because all this time, my little boy hasn't changed. Sure, he's cooing now and playing "Monkey hear, monkey say" with simple things like "ahh" and "goo". And he's grown four inches and gained five pounds. But still, he hasn't changed. I look at him every day, and today he looks the same as he did yesterday, and the day before and the day before that. Even though I know he's gotten bigger. Just like I always know how old he is (now he's just about 11 weeks), so I know how much time has passed. And yet, it doesn't seem like any time has passed.

Next thing I'll know is he'll be having kids of his own, and I'll say, "But wasn't he just a baby yesterday? If he's never changed from day to day, then how did he get so grown up?"

Our New Arrival

My baby boy was born at 9:38 AM on Friday, April 10, 2009. He came about two and a half weeks early, but that was because I got incredibly high blood pressure during the last two weeks of my pregnancy so the doctors decided it was better to induce. On the plus side, my labor and delivery only lasted about three and a half hours. Baby Nate weighed 5 pounds, 13 ounces and was 18 inches long.

So needless to say, with balancing taking care of our newborn, round the clock feedings, doctor's appointments to got to, not having enough time to eat and sleep, and still needing to clean our bedroom to make room for all the baby's things and all the stuff my husband brought back from Japan with him, I've had no time to write. Of course I knew while I was still pregnant that I wouldn't have much time to write once the baby was born, which was why I wanted to finish Butterfly Mask before he was born, but I just didn't realize how little time I would actually have once I got done with doing all the baby things.

I still want to finish Butterfly Mask and send it out into the world to get published, but it'll have to wait until I have a little more free time. If I'm lucky that'll be when the bedroom finally gets cleaned. If I'm not so lucky, that won't be for quite some time.

Though something I can find somewhat amusing is that I wanted to go to grad school and be a student again because so I could keep a busy schedule and better manage my time. Because when I had so much stuff I needed to do, like all the classes I needed to attend and all the writing and studying I needed to do for those classes, whenever I finished my schoolwork, I was very eager to work on my book, even if it was for just five minutes before my next class started. And I think I just realized that with how busy my schedule has just become with the little guy, I might start taking advantage of those precious five minutes a lot more often than I used to. And who knows, maybe I'll have my book done in no time.

The only set back is that I can't do much typing or writing for the next couple weeks. Not that I'll really have time. But, due to the high blood pressure, I retained a lot of fluid in my fingers, especially in my right hand, so I have to wait for that to go away before I can go super gung ho with the typing. I just hope that by the time the numbness in my fingers goes away, I'll have a little more time to slowly work on my book.

Genres I Write In

I've written in a couple different genres. 

The first novel I wrote was probably historical romance (Running Water). (I didn't think in terms of genre when I wrote it.) The set of novels (two and a quarter books of a trilogy) were modern day science fiction (WhaleSong), with some fantasy thrown into the mix. And that trilogy's prequel (DragonRose) was probably the closest I've come to high fantasy.

I co-wrote a number of comical short stories with one of my friends that were a mix of "real-life" and semi-science fiction. The short stories I wrote for school were mostly animal stories, with one attempt at horror.

But now my writing tends to have some element of the supernatural. Mostly, I write urban fantasy. I consider my main world to be urban fantasy, but some of the stories I'd like to write vary a little. For instance, within the urban fantasy context of the world, I have a story that's historical (The Emerald Dragon), a series and a stand alone that are young adult (No Leaf Clover and Wolf Eyes), biopunk (Psychic series), humorous and/or light (Rosaline DeLiney's series), and futuristic (Butterfly Mask), in addition to straight urban fantasy (Awaken) and possibly horror (Like a Frothing Rabid Dog is Adorable).

I also have an apocalyptic story I'd like to write with angels and demons (Angel Love, Demon Love), a YA high fantasy, and others. 

Copy-Paste Problems

There have been a couple posts I've wanted to write this last month. They're written, just for some reason I'm having a difficult time copy-pasting things. (I think it's the computer that I'm using because I never had a problem copy-pasting with my laptop.)

As soon as I have access to a computer that will allow me to copy-paste, I'll add a couple posts about some of the worlds I've created, namely their government systems.

But for now, I'm going to post here first, and then copy-paste my post from here to the message board I'm trying to post to.

More Death

My dad's family hasn't been doing too well this year. First, in October, my grandma died. Then within a week, two of my uncles died. Both of cancer. 

The first uncle was my dad's brother-in-law. From what I understand, he wasn't diagnosed with cancer until Friday, February 20th. Then he had to go in for emergency surgery that Wednesday night and didn't make it.

The second uncle was my dad's brother. He hadn't been doing too well for a while. My mom called me tonight to tell me that he was in a coma and they weren't waking him up or something, then as I was on the phone with her, she got another call from my sister saying that he died.

It's one of those times where, as a writer, I can imagine emotions for different characters to feel. And depending on the character who dies, I can imagine how different characters would react. But right now, the only feeling I have is no feeling. And I think it's this no feeling that some of my characters would feel, but as a writer, you think, but characters are supposed to feel something, without realizing that not feeling anything can be a perfectly reasonable feeling.