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Okay, people. I grew up reading Science Fiction and Fantasy and mystery. I’ve still read a limited amount of romance.

For good and sufficient reason, I have decided I need to explore the genre more. Who should I be reading? Suggestions ranging from the popcorn to the serious much appreciated. Preferrably books available for the kindle, because my house is already sinking under the weight of books.

I have been very hesitant about this trying to blog everyday thing, but between Dave Freer and my agent, they’ve convinced me this is absolutely necessary. I note I already missed a day in the last week, but I will try to persevere.

However, I suspect, like a lot of other daily blogs written by writers, you will have to endure my occasional whine about not being able to write. This one is actually special. It’s a whine about not being able to write OR read.

I usually can gage my levels of tiredness and neurosis by what I read. If I’m going along at a fair clip, I read a lot of new stuff – like six to ten books a week, ranging from sf to mystery to romance. Yeah, it’s not that much compared to some of you, but consider that I also write two to four books a year and do assorted furniture refinishing and such.

When I’m not doing so well emotionally – and it can be anything, ranging from a worry about the kid’s school to a worry about a friend’s health, to (all too often) a worry about my career – I re-read stuff I’ve read before. Usually stuff I read before a long time ago, like Heinlein or Simak or Christie or…

And then there’s the times when I’m so near the snapping point – for any of the reasons above, but usually also because of some physical issue – when all I can read are Disney comics.

I’ve only twice in my life come to the point when Disney comics were hard to understand. The first was when I was very ill at around twelve and the other when I had bad pneumonia.

For the last year I’ve been stuck at phase two. For the last two weeks at phase three. This is weird since I’ve written less this year than normal and while one kid’s school is worrying me, it’s not that bad, just not excellent and not at the level he could do.

Unfortunately, while I’ve pushed through and written some, when I read what I wrote it reads like it was translated. Possibly from Mandarin Chinese. It was also written by an alien, in that the emotions get “Threaded” funny. I.e., people will react to things out of turn… before they happen, when they happen to someone else, etc. Editing is as much effort as writing.

Now, I have no clue why, but at least in the last two weeks I think it is just a sinus infection – at least judging from other symptoms. So, today I’m taking myself to the doctor and seeing if I can get this under control. And then I need to figure why the long-term issues. I suspect they’re physical, I just don’t know in what way yet. Of course, it would be just that I’ve been working hard at losing weight, and that takes its own toll. Unfortunately that’s on for the next two years or sixty pounds, whichever comes first. So if that’s the issue, I need to find ways to cope.

There is this tendency among writers – maybe among people in general – to think our minds are divorced from our bodies, but what I’ve found is that when I’m doing something inexplicable and can’t stop myself from doing it, no matter what the will power (like… binging on bananas seems to mean my potassium is low) there is a physical reason.

As a reader, I find this fascinating. What books would Heinlein have left if his health weren’t always between bad to indifferent? In what ways has health affected other favorite authors? Are some of the more blah books by very good authors the result of an illness that wouldn’t let go.

It is humbling and sobering to realize that a writer is both mind and flesh and blood. No matter what the worlds in our minds, our minds are still trapped in this world.

Or something that’s generating lots and lots of pain.  I spent yesterday fighting with a mind-debilitating headache.  However, I did write on Saturday, and my brain does, finally, seem to be in writing gear.  It’s all in leaving the cons behind, I think.  So now I get to buckle down and write.  YAY.

For months now, I’ve been dealing with a slow breakdown of every appliance in this house: from a leaking washer to an exploding refrigerator shelf, I’ve walked with Murphy beside me all the days of my life.

Frankly, the last time this happened I was trying to collaborate with Eric Flint and right now I was considering going back an finishing that collaboration, so I’m so totally blaming him for this.  My appliances hate Eric Flint.

Anyway, that’s not the alarming part.  That’s an annoying part, and expensive in time and money, but particularly time — which is why we’ve put off shopping for new appliances till after the cons.  It’s easier to do dishes by hand and hit the laundromat once a week than to spend a week or two shopping and then clear the basement for washer delivery

Meanwhile, the weirdest thing has happened.  My dishwasher was DEAD — as in, electrically dead.  This wasn’t even surprising because this dishwasher has had the control panel replaced upteen times, and going electrically dead is what it does.  It’s been that way for about two months now.  I was using it as a glorified dish rack, to keep the kittehs off te dishes and I left the door slightly open so stuff dried.

So, yesterday, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea and talking to the guys and I look over at the dishwasher panel and see lights on.  For a while all I could do was point and go “the… the… the….”

We took shameless advantage and ran  a load of dishes, figuring this was a weird fluke and we’d get exactly ONE wash out of it.  However, today it continued to function, and I ran another load.

Now I’m worried.  This is akin to your dead-and-buried pet coming back into the house, or the best friend that you saw shot to death yesterday sitting up in his coffin.  I’m all for a working dishwasher, of course. Leaves me more time to write in.  Still, it’s hard to escape the feeling it’s a zombie and it will start making unnatural demands pretty soon.

Do zombie dishwashers wash your brains?

Do you know how many people tell me that if writing just one novel a year doesn’t pay enough to live on I should get a “real job”?

Leave aside the fact that writing is a job — it’s a skilled profession, editors expect us to act professionally, and we put in as many hours in it as in any other job.  No, I’m not subscribing to the Marxist theory of labor.  I know you can spend hours polishing a dog turd and it still won’t be worth much.  However I also know my books continue to be published by publishing houses which are, presumably, businesses and don’t do this stuff out of charity.  Therefore I am not, presumably, writing dog turds.

I also know that the business is broken.  Even more so than other arts.  And so the producers end up making very little indeed, even when people in the middle DO make money.  (Have to.  Come on, the stores and publishing houses don’t stay open on air and promises.  Yeah, I know they’re failing, but still.  And don’t get me on that subject, trust me.)

So, is the suggestion that I get a real job and write on the side a good one?  Perhaps, from a monetary point of view.  Except that in my own, personal situation, it’s almost impossible.

First of all I don’t write just a novel a year.  There are many reasons for this, but the most important is that I can’t write just a novel a year or that novel will become unreadable.  Maybe I’ll explain that in a future post…  Just take me on faith for now.

More importantly, writing is not my only job.  Oh, it’s my only paying job.  But in the long road to publication, I became other things — mother, housewife, refinisher of furniture, cook, etc, etc, etc.  Some days I can barely fit in the writing and I know from past experience if I have a full time job, I won’t be able to fit in the writing.

So what’s the solution?  Danged if I know.  I have to find new ways to market my writing, maybe, now that electronic publishing is available.  I have to write new things and hope they pay better.  And then, too, some of my other jobs will change — I mean the boys will move out eventually, right?

When I was a kid I used to think I would grow up and have it all and it would be effortless.  Now I know better.  I can have it all, but it will be effort-ful.

One of the things we don’t normally mention (much) is the animals that help writers.  I mean, inspiration, help (they do press keys) and reassurance on those days when it seems like nobody loves you…

As everyone knows — right? — my normal helpers are five very dedicated (possibly to eldritch gods) cats, four indoor, one outdoor.

However, when visiting my inlaws, before World Fantasy Con I benefited from the editorial and supportive services of two insane doggies — my in-laws little toy poodles.  Their names are — SUPPOSEDLY —  Sandy and Rusty, but my husband had them answering to  Fluffer and Nutter, which really fit their personalities.

Fluffer is on the left, and Nutter asleep next to him, below.  My husband “killed” them with tiredness by playing with them too much.  Cruel.

I have decided to commit NaNoWrimo.  I’ve done this before but not for the last two years.  This is because November is a spectacularly bad month for us to try to do this in.  There are two birthdays in the family, in addition to the holiday and preparing for the December holidays.  However, I have a book — The Brave And The Free — that’s three quarters done and one — A Fatal Stain — that’s started, and they both need to be finished ASAP so I can move on to other projects.  So, there it is.  I’ll be Nanoing and reporting on it.

It started badly as yesterday and today were consumed by what can only be called “stupid cat tricks.”  Miranda-cat swallowed what appears to be an entire spool of black sewing thread, causing us to take her to the emergency room yesterday. 

For a while we feared surgery would happen, but it turns out no, she actually passed the thread after “a massive amount of laxative” (in the words of the vet’s assistant.)  She will be home as soon as daddy can pick her up, and I’m sure she’ll have words with us.  Meanwhile I’ll go and pick up the highschooler at three something, and then try to settle down and write.

*HOW did I forget to give you guys a taste of this? It came out in April. A French Polished Murder, by Elise Hyatt. Yeah, it’s me, of course.*

A French Polished Murder

The Fast And the Electrically Furious
We were thirty years old – and, in his case, a couple of months — when I came to the sad conclusion that I would have to murder my friend Benedict Colm.
This was as sad as it was necessary, but there was no getting from the fact as my son, Enoch – whom I called E in an attempt to save him therapy bills as he got older – came speeding into the living room, atop Ben’s Christmas gift to him.
The gift was an electric toy motorcycle with a top speed of ten miles per hour, an acceleration that might seem impossible for a small boy in a home that was less than seventy feet in either direction, but which E managed, quite often.
I heard the horn blare a moment before E came riding in and, with the practice born of two weeks of terror, dove behind the sofa, while Ben, who stood square in the middle of the living room, his arms crossed on his chest, became an impromptu traffic circle.
E sped around him once, twice, then headed the other way, at an increased velocity.
“What do you mean you’ll have to kill me?” Ben asked, obtusely, looking at me. “And what are you doing behind the sofa?” Continue reading “A French Polished Murder” →