Worldcon's over, the new issue of Ideomancer is up, and I have my life back. I can now post the notes from two of the panels I attended that I found particularly interesting and informative.

(My way of deciding whether to attend a panel nowadays is to look at the panel subject and the panel participants. Panel participants always trump the subject. Always. Which explains why I had to attend the Rewriting panel: Peter Beagle. D'oh.)

However, the notes on the last panel I attended were partially written, so you get that one first. I'm also postdating this entry and breaking them into two separate posts.

Notes on The Query Letter panel

Panelists: Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Carolyn Grayson (agent), Hilari Bell, Jean-Noel Bassior

JNB: The first goal of a query letter is to get the agent or editor to visualize the book in their mind, but it is NOT a pitch. Secondly, it has to make them want to read more.

CG: (Things she asks herself as she reads the query) Can I see this book? Is it fresh and exciting?

Things that stop her reading: Grammatical mistakes, someone who obviously doesn't understand the genre (frex, a 300K YA)

HB: Find the one point that makes YOU excited and put that element into the query.

JL: Find the market you think it should be in; what makes it marketable? As far as the exciting point, use it to show why someone else would read it.

Suggested formats:

JNB: First paragraph: 1 sentence pitch.

I have a _______ about __________.

Second paragraph: Mention credentials IF they are applicable to this particular novel/novels.

Then, three paragraphs about your story.

CG:

I have a SF/whatever novel of _________ words.

Wants to know enough of the story. Mention the protag as opposed to spelling out the background - (too little information if you don't mention the protag, too much if you mention non-relevant stuff like your membership in the Lions Club.

Show me the tone of the novel through the query.

Tell them enough of the story to interest them. Read book jackets for the idea, but filter the hype.

HB (I think):

First paragraph: Plunge into the story (at a very exciting point.)

Second paragraph: I have written Title, complete at _____ words, and give a one-sentence synopsis of the story.

Third paragraph: Synopsis of story

Fourth paragraph: Your bio, if you have something pertinent for this novel.

Fifth paragraph: Closing (Do NOT tell the agent what to do) If this project is of interest, email/phone/ blahblahblah. Send a SASE.

JL (I think): As an agent reads your query, he/she is thinking about the markets where it could be sold. You must show them what the market is, not tell them.

Note: E-queries do get a faster response.

Note: If you send a query, do not receive a response in a timely manner, and decide to follow up with a phone call, ask for the editor's editorial assistant. NO ONE ever calls them and they WILL come to the phone.

HB: A query letter is 1-2 pages. Two if you must, one is better.

A short synopsis is 1-2 pages. You send this with sample chapters.

A long synopsis is designed to pitch to editors before the book is written.

Hero needs to overcome overwhelming odds to accomplish goals.

Not enough new words to count, although I spent quite a while on the ded charley rewrite. I've almost got the end where I want it, and we'll see if I still believe that tomorrow.

Rule #724: Sit on a rewrite for a couple of days and stare. You'll always find something else that needs tweaking. Better to find it before you send than after it's printed. :P

Yes, I have rules. They're more along the lines of guidelines, really.¹

By popular demand, I am now including my con report. (Mostly because I can't find the damn paper with all my notes on that revising panel. When I find it, you'll be the first to know. Cross my heart.)

I arrived Wednesday night, on the late side, actually. It was about 9P. I checked in, headed upstairs, and found E. That night is a blur because I had worked that day, which meant up at 5:30A, and bed was good. Really, really good. (I don't remember going downstairs to the bar that night, but we might have. This would answer the question of how dead was I, naturally.)

Up at 9A, off to breakfast at the Marriott, with very happy wait staff. Very happy. Oh, were they happy. I needed coffee, so I wasn't quite prepared for the cheery hellos. Since E had been staying in the hotel for a few days already, she had menu recommendations all prepared. Then it was off to register (a breeze!) and the panels. My first was the Revise Revise Revise one with Peter Beagle, who I found quite thoughtful in his comments. I came away with a few pieces of advice that I'm going to try, like: Revise the first time for story. Revise the second time for style, and try outlining the piece (plot or story (defined as the characters and internal conflict, whichever is the weaker for you) to make writing flow.

I'm hopeful that those might actually work for me.

I hit Guerilla Marketing for the Neo-Pro and first saw Toby there and Jed on the way. E convinced me to go to Match Game, which was quite amusing, and more fan-attended, I'm thinking. Somewhere between sessions, I hit the dealer's room. I'm not a huge TV fan, so I only admired the Star Trek and other series' costumes from afar, and there's no way I'd ever dress up for a photo on the Star Trek bridge. Nor did I really investigate the cars/vehicles they'd brought, although I did pause at the space exhibits. Lots of books. Lots of jewelry. Lots of art which I viewed on Friday, I think.

We had dinner (somewhere, perhaps the Italian place with Deanna and her nephew?) and settled into the Hilton bar for a few hours that night. I met Blake (a new writer from Tor, no, I don't remember his last name, so don't bother asking), David Kirtley, Scott Edelman and three of his local friends, and a good couple of hours was spent by all. I also found Robin and Daniel from my Clarion class! Then we extracted ourselves, and switched to the bar at the Marriott, where we were to meet up with the OWW people and pass out stickers. There we found Bonnie, Wendy, Traci Castleberry, Melinda Goodin, [Kyle Kinder, Kim Jollow Zimring, and JJA, his agent and a friend, thanks, Traci!] and people whose names escape me. (I've had this post on hold for 24 hours, hopinghopinghoping the memory would kick it but it hasn't. If you remember who I don't, for heaven's sake, smack me with a clue x 4.)

Then it was bedtime, because I couldn't seem to manage the up til 2 or 3A, sleep until 8A and do it again routine. I am blaming that on the fact that I didn't have to switch timezones.

Friday, I did the "It Crawled Out of the Slush Pile" since I have yet to find anything as horrendous as my um... favorite. This year it came closer, although I discovered Betsy Mitchell had to read more of her selection to get the same effect. E and I ran up to chat with JJA, exchanged another few words with Betsy Mitchell, who has E's novel on her to-be-read pile, and got invited to lunch with JJA and the crowd. In the end, we didn't sit at John's end of the table, so I met more people: Bill Shunn and Craig Engler, the senior VP of SciFi.com. (No, I didn't catch onto who he was until later. Otherwise I would have said something about missing Ellen's magazine. :P) Afterwards, I started with Culture Building 101, but when I realized Hilari Bell was going to break us into groups and force us to participate (too close to teaching training days, believe me), I ran away to the 21st Century Physics panel. As usual, every single word that dropped from their mouths (where their = Wil McCarthy, Eric M. Van, James P. Hogan, and Geoffrey Landis) made complete sense and I was able to parse complete paragraphs at a time, sometimes the entire discussion. Unfortunately, my brain is not used to being exercised in this manner and rebelled: nothing stuck. I apparently lack the required physics gene, as much as I'd like to add it to my DNA. On the way to my next panel, I saw Nancy Kress and stopped to chat, which allowed me to meet another Clarionite, whose name I've blanked on. But he was nice! Really! Then it was off to the Style vs. Subtance panel, where I got to hear more from James Patrick Kelly, and afterwards had John Kessel introduce himself to Robin and me. (Luckily, Robin was wearing her Clarion shirt.) The cool thing about that is he spoke about Gabe, another Clarion class member, who will be in his program/class this semester. So yay! for Gabe!

Friday night was the Clarion party, so I went there for two hours, found the open vent for the a/c and stood beneath it with David Marusek and Robin. When that ended, we all headed up to the Tor party in the presidential suite. (One would think the hotel would post signs. One would be wrong. Apparently the Hilton believes that providing guests with a map of the building above the fifth floor could be considered cheating. Yeah, the people staying in the Hilton paid more for that, too!) Robin and I watched the Disneyland fireworks, since the balcony provides a lovely view. It wasn't until later that I looked down and realized the balcony is only a couple of floors above... a parking lot. Still, the party was great, for it wasn't crowded as much as usual. We hung with David for a while, met David Hartwell's granddaughter, and hung around with Jay Lake's crowd for a bit. Then we went back to the Hilton bar and closed out the evening there.

Saturday, I hit Editing: Good, Bad, and Ugly. From there, I went to the Omnibus Publishing session, which had a number of people who were quite interesting to listen to: Gordon, of course, Evo Terra, Robert Burnett, Lydia Marano, and Lou Anders. Afterwards, I went up to Lou and introduced myself since Ideo's published a number of reviews of Pyr books. Another panel, The Future We Didn't Expect, with both Courtney and Connie Willis, Vernor Vinge, and Larry Niven was interesting, but I didn't quite get the sense that there was any consensus on what unknown things the future would hold, and I wondered at the time about the ability to even answer the panel's essential question. Then off we went to the bar at that point, (have you sensed a theme yet?) and chatted until Hugo time.

The Hugos were the Hugos. And every bit as fun, if not more. I love Connie Willis live; the schtick she had going with Robert Silverberg was cute, if not completely unpredictable. But basically, humor and laughter flowed pretty much the entire time, which is why I was uncertain as to what Connie's reaction was to you know who. I know I was surprised by the grope, but uncertain as to whether it was planned or not. Still, the takeaway was my admiration of Connie's aplomb and ability to continue the program as planned. After rewatching the video a few times, I am more filled with admiration for the woman in the face of you-know-who's idiocy, bad taste and/or worse judgment.

Afterwards were parties, but Robin and I couldn't find the one in the Hilton that we were looking for, so we took another trip to the Hilton bar and found the Interstitial party, and were able to welcome Scalzi with the others when he showed up in his tiara.

I made a trip to the panel on the 501(c)(3) tax exemption, where I got great information. Unfortunately, while I'm pretty certain this is the way I want to take Ideomancer, and sooner rather than later since I just hiked the pay rates 25% (although 25% more of not all that much but what I can afford is still not all that much, so don't get too excited, peoples.) Mostly, I'm worried about incorporating, because that seems to be the first step. (Eeeeeee. That's just not how I operate.)

So yeah. Lots and lots of note-taking on that one. LOTS AND LOTS.

Finally, the last panel, (the one I already reported on), and back to the bar. For drinks! And to see who was still hanging around. Fortunately, there were quite a few Bay Area people there, and while I saw Eileen Gunn chatting up a storm with Ben, I didn't feel as though I could interrupt. I did have a brief chat as she was leaving, though.

So mostly, this con was about contacts and meeting new people—something I've never been particularly good at, but I'm forcing myself to do. I did take the first step by introducing myself as the publisher of Ideomancer and lord knows, that's been some time in coming. I must feel as though I have a decent grasp of the site's html finally. :P

Little steps, you know?

And heck, I know I'm forgetting stuff, like people's names and possibly the order of events, and whatnot, but it's been over a week and school got in the way. Well, that and my random memory. (Truly, I think the guy in charge of short-term memory acquisition has been sleeping on the job. Or at least pushing the wrong buttons. Because, ugh.)

Finally, in other news, I think the rewrite's done. Maybe. Except for, possibly a new title. If I could create a poll, I would. But you can tell me! What about Charley's Harley or Dickheads?

¹The things you learn from pirates. Amazing.

No actual word count last night, but taking some Worldcon panel advice, I outlined the story. Mingled with the plot. Not separately. Oh, well.

The good thing is that I managed to nail the structure down, because I was really puzzled how to handle this one. I wanted the major emotional conflict to be between the kid and his mom, but with all the action happening in space—where Mom wasn't. Naturally.

Mom is now a non-character. The story starts with a communication to Mom from the son, and ends with a communication to Mom from the son's CO and another from the son.

When you can't figure out how to get that extra character worked into the story, make the readers work for you, and let them take on the role of Mom.

Go, me!

Unsurprisingly, I now have three new characters. One female, emotionally hitting some of the buttons that good-old-Mom hits for the kid, and two males, one friend, one foe.

I have a better idea of who these people are after knowing them for a few words on paper, than I do the kid, after thinking about him for four weeks.

What the hell.

If you catch me eyeing young men, do not think prurient thoughts of me. No, it's more along the lines of trying to discover how they tick.

Meanwhile, in other news, my story is still sold. Wendy has not come to her senses and retracted the offer.

I'm still semi-stunned by the thought. And the kids I tell around here (most of whom have heard about the story, but not actually read it), are equally stunned that someone can sell a story about a dick on a satellite dish.

Who'da thunk?

I've been up for almost an hour and a half already. Yeah. It's Saturday. Supposedly. Although you can't tell by the time my alarm clock went off this morning.

However, the Spousling is gone to Wood Badge for the day, the children, two of mine plus one Adopted Child, and a friend, who will be another Adopted Child before I know it, left for the beach. There is one other Adopted Child sleeping on the sofa, but he's quiet and isn't much of a bother. Even the dog is sleeping.

One would think there would be enough of a sleepy ion buildup, that I would be sleeping.

But no. Instead, I've critted one potential Ideo story for the rewrite, and sent it off. I have one more to go.

In my own writing news, there is no writing. There's thinking. I'm staring at that outline and thinking of bits to add. I'm attempting to visualize the actual scenes that will accomplish these goals, not including the bookending communications: those aren't the story, although they will document, I hope, the protag's change towards his mother, and some indication, I hope, of a societal change about him and the meeting of one of his goals.

I've gone looking for Hispanic faces to assign to the kid. I usually don't worry about what my characters look like—I'm more concerned with what they think, how they behave, the choices they make, and their rationales.

But this story is approaching all backwards.

And if I needed a truth about writing, it's that all your skills aren't necessarily going to produce a story before its time.

I need the damn character to step out and start talking, dammit. And I know he's got a small chip on his shoulder that he struggles with, and I also know that I'm going to smack him hard. Really hard, so I can give him a reason for that chip, and make him have to fight his natural inclinations, too.

Eesh. The struggle.

I finally found my notes on the Revise, Revise, Revise panel. Go me!

The tricks from James Kelly: Murder your darlings. Type out the draft all over again. (Without looking at the first draft. Eeeeeeeee.) Recommends the Ten Percent Solution (but damned if I can find that volume on Amazon. I'm presuming it's a writing book.)

From Jacqueline LIchtenberg: Revise for STORY FIRST. One rewrite for story (don't mess around with the prose); One for style. Two elements to consider: Plot is the sequence of events. The story is all about the characters and internal conflict. By the end of the tale, the protag should be emotionally capable of things they couldn't do before. Finally, use an outline for the stuff that doesn't come naturally. If it's the plot, outline that. If it's the story, outline that instead.

Read Joan Aiden's book on writing YA.

Last but not least, I'm trying to chase down Chris Clarke, the former publisher of Ideo. Anyone out there have a relatively current email addy? He was last, I heard, in Australia, but getting ready to head to the UK for a business/pleasure trip.

Three hundred words. It's a start.

I've been sitting on beginning this story because I didn't know the character, although I've known a lot about him. The situation wasn't improving. The more I thought about how I didn't know him, the more I feared to start.

So I stuck him outside the space station with a very biased woman in charge. And she's calling him derogatory names.

New realization: If you want to get to know a character and see what he's made of, put him in a bad place with a character who is going to tick him off.

Three hundred words later, I don't care if I know him inside and out or not. I do know how he's going to respond—at least enough for a first draft and to continue on.

Plus, tonight with any luck, I won't be writing to the sound track of Labyrinth. (Full blast, mind you, and me with no ear plugs. Or at least none where I could remember putting them. The beginning is stuffed full with highlighted words and things like NAME because I wasn't able to concentrate on a SFnal story while a fantasy sound track played.

One can hope. Particularly if all the non-space DVDs on the shelf suddenly vanish.

(That would leave, maybe, three. Hrm. The children might notice. I'll claim DVDworms ate them.)

But first there is housework. Somehow with two extra people living here, things go downhill much faster. My goal for this week is get the kids to actually put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher rather than the counter. They're breeding before my eyes. The least they could do is take it into the dishwasher where I don't have to watch them.

Finally, the dog apparently trapped something under the coffee table in the family room. I'm hoping it's a cricket, say, versus, a mouse.

Although knowing Harley's predilections for grandstanding, it could be a vicious toilet paper roll.

(The soundtrack this morning? The patter of tiny toenails on the entryway tiles as Harley runs back and forth to kill his stuffed bird.)

Less than 1K into the story, my brain is already ticking off revision notes. Yes, let's not start with his personality in transition. Let him make some mistakes. He can be an idiot and mutter under his breath at the obnoxious woman. I'm already to the point where I'm grateful I'll be able to off her.

Even if it does mean that he's going to suffer for it. And seriously so.

But wow. She's ticking me off.

I seriously considered moving to Fillmore yesterday morning. The commute (all of a half hour) sucked. It had virtually nothing to do with traffic patterns, either.

First stop: Moorpark for the school bus loading. Five minutes. I wanted to jump out and prod the little darlings.

Next a truck. No biggee, there are always trucks. I expect at least one along the road (we have three quarries now along the route) and maybe a golfer or two. There were no golfers. (+ three minutes)

The accident: a three-car on the opposite side of the road but spilling into my lane through bits of broken glass and smushed fiberglass parts. And a tire. Or two. They were pretty well mashed. (No apparent injuries, but wow. Someone must have tried to pass after crossing the bridge and thank God I wasn't going the other way. Traffic on that side was backed up all the way over the bridge, into town, and to the 126 stoplight. And no police! Anywhere. I'm adding the Fillmore police department number to my cell, because wow. Call 911 and that'll take five minutes longer than the police.) (+ two minutes)

On the other side of the bridge: CalTrans, or someone, decided to CLOSE THE ROAD and send us off on a detour. My first mistake? Following the detour route instead of going my own way. The second mistake? Not cutting through the back of the shopping center. (+ five minutes)

I managed to wend my way around and back to A St., turn, make it through the stop sign, and the railroad arms are down. (This is the third time in twenty YEARS I have been stopped at this railroad crossing. It's used very little, and more recently, only by the little dinner train. (+ 2 minutes)

My 25-minute commute has just taken a grand total of forty-two minutes. Bleh.

Today had better be much quicker. That's all I'm saying.

Okay, blessed by friends (or was it BoingBoing?) I have discovered Vitas. A rival for my old favorite, Ivan Rebroff. Both remarkable voices, marked by glorious falsettos, and personality magnified. (Not that they direct themselves to the same audience—no, oh no. Rebroff definitely gears himself toward the traditional Russian folksong crowd, while Vitas? Well, there's the whole French chanteuse thing going on, with a splash of techno-goth¹ imagery, minus the obvious technology, for the violins aren't electric. But still.)

¹Note: If there's even such a thing, but if there wasn't, there is now.

Happy happy.

And did I mention alone in my house? I have the dog, but he's sleeping. Middle Child left at 3A to move to Davis. He took the Slug with him for moving purposes. They will return tomorrow at some point, whereupon Middle Child will leave. Again. The Spousling is off at Wood Badge and playing chef for the crowd there. The adopted child is out with another adopted child who spent the night. I don't know when they'll be back, but for the moment I am all by myself.

And the two goals on my list for today are: get dressed (in something other than jammies) and take a nap.

Now, if I could lose the headache, I would be enjoying the day even more.

The writing paused. I finished up the last 300 words and I know the pacing is already off. She should have died in under 900 words.

I must kill them faster! Much faster!

I refuse to go back and tighten. I will write long and cut the heck out of it later.

So the idea is to have her dead in the next 300 words.

Possibly that will be accomplished by writing: KILL HER HERE and moving on.

I am all about the short cuts.

School is sucking my life (and brains) away. The latest news, unconfirmed by the official audit which won't happen until the beginning of October, is that somehow the district has acquired nearly a million dollars. (Yes, it was hiding. Despite the union's claims to the contrary that It Was Really There and Why Can't You People SEE IT, For God's Sake.)

Now the union line (at least by a few people) is: You Owe Us An Apology For Not Believing That We Were Telling The Truth.

Eesh.

I have to wonder if it was really in my best interest to attend meetings populated with Idiots™. I could have made do with kinders and my own children/spouse, really.

And now, off to catch up on something. Either the dressing or the sleeping with some reading mixed in.

Yay for Saturdays!

Life is gearing up to be a zoo. Again. Dammit.

I'm enjoying the peace and quiet while I can. In about half an hour, my two children return, and if the older one tries to leave immediately for a return drive to Davis, I will throw myself prone in front of his car wheels.

He can just damn well spend the night and drive back tomorrow.

In terms of writing news, there is none. Sadly. I am fighting myself to overcome the dislike I already feel. Part of the reluctance is due to the fact that I know it's already flawed. The remainder is sheer laziness.

Aren't there pills for that?

I figure I'm going to have to return to the writing on the laptop. After posting this, I will transfer the story over. And go upstairs to hide in my bedroom to write, provided, of course, my prone body is not needed to prevent the Middle Child from returning. It's not as though he really needs to be at school tomorrow.

Choir this morning was typical:

Kevin, (passing out sheets of lyrics): Okay, so I don't have the music, and neither does the other person who has it, so this is what you're singing. *hums melody a couple of times* Got it?

Jody: This is so 9A.

Kevin (realizing he hasn't gone over the psalm with the soloists): Let's run through. *plays one verse at the speed of light* Did you all sing your verses? Okay. Good. *breaks into opening song*

So yeah. Forget about calling us the 9A choir. Why not just Punt? Because that's apropos. I nailed a harmony for that first bit by the third response, and I'm damn grateful we weren't doing gospel riffs to the Spanish lyrics. (I can't wait until the 5:30P mass where he tries this on the teenagers. :P)

Another 600 words, and she's STILL not dead. I'm at the point where I'm tossing in less-than-subliminal messages to myself (not that I count those as words) like: KILL HER. or KILL HER NOW. or DIEDIEDIEDIE.

I'm sure I'll get there eventually. If not, the first draft will be littered with my little commands.

I just wish I knew for certain if the subconscious was listening.

I've been paying close attention to the Day Fire. Last bit of news was that it was five miles north of Fillmore. I've been waiting for the call that school will be closed today, but nothing. I really hope that we will not have to deal with emergency evacuations at any point. A middle school in my area had a bomb threat the other day, which meant, oh, yes, sending all those children home after making certain they went with the parents/whoever on the emergency cards. Three hours later....

But the Spousling made it home. He was up at the camp close to Ojai, and I got worried when I'd read Search and Rescue had evacuated a group of scouts and leaders.

With any luck, this will be the year where most everything surrounding Fillmore will have burned recently, and maybe we'll have a fire break.

One can only hope.

All I know, is that there's going to be a lot of ash again today. And those kind of days are just weird. Holocaust/end of the world weird, with smoky skies and gray ash everywhere, and the stuff drifting down like snowflake. Get enough ash, and yes, it builds up like snowdrifts, too.

Maybe I'll take a DVD into school just in case. My guess is that we won't be playing outside.

Bleh.

Inching towards death. Cate's, to be exact.

At least I've got her at the point where she's going to die and spewing vituperation at all and sundry.

My protag is too damn nice. I'll need to make him less shiny and naive and more anger-driven.

That'll be a rewrite, too.

Eesh.

There were many capitals last night. Things like: ANOTHER TOOL HERE. and TOOL, FOOL! Little reminder notes.

I must remember to destroy this first draft. Should the day ever arrive when someone wants to publish my rough drafts, yes, I will be dead, but it could conceivably due to embarrassment.

In other news, the middle child destroyed me yesterday.

MC: I hope I get home sometime tonight.

Me: You're coming back home?!

MC: No Mom, home to the apartment.

Me: That's home?! *waaaaaaaaaah* You only slept there one night!

So yes, another little bird has been pushed out of the nest. (Well, not pushed. Let's just say he was on the ledge, and I was trying to yank him back into the nest, but he ripped his wing from my grasp, tottered back to the ledge and dropped.

There's your metaphor for the day.

All right, I've killed her. She's dead.

And it only took 2300 words to get her to that spot.

The other 800-900 words have set up her lover who has beaten Pete up, gotten Pete to the infirmary, and yes, oh by the way, introduced his one and only friend.

You don't have to know more than that to realize the pacing's off.

*makes frowny faces at WIP which blithely ignores them and sticks out its tongue.*

God, I hate smug stories.

The Day fire is still burning. We still have ash in Fillmore. We can go outside but no one can run. (Have you ever tried to have kids play tag at a walk? Right.

I have a flat tire.

(There was glass. I thought I'd missed it. I was wrong. The End.)

It is only Thursday. We have a faculty meeting today. I am damn tired of meetings, and this is a perfectly good reason to explain why I never get to organize the closet.

I really NEED a Friday. Like right now.

The winds are picking up quite substantially. The semi-good news: there's no visible smoke. The not-so-good news: The winds are blowing west, and that's the unrestricted front of the fire. I do not envy the firefighters. At all.

The Slug had four wisdom teeth yanked last night. She appears to survive, solely due, I'm sure, to the Vicodin. (Go pain-reliving drugs!)

This morning she is apparently selling Scout popcorn for her Venture crew.

I'm astounded. (Probably more by the fact that after a short wakeup at 6:30A, I fell back to sleep until 10. There were Evil Nuns and innocent children to rescue (stuffed in yellow bags and lifted into the spaceship's bay.) There were also weapons that my side acquired to escape the ENs, much crawling through underbrush, and after that, magical control of our escape via these very SFnal weapons.)

I am not certain why the damn dreams have plots and apparent story, when I have to fight to write them.

The electric bill just came. It's for $600. Visualize my mouth dropping open.

And that's a wrap up of the news, folks. Except for the part where the extra sleep slugged me between the eyes, and I now have my usual sinus headache.

(I'm positive that's unrelated to the winds. POSITIVE.)

(Oh, fine. Positive, more or less.)

Okay, when they start evacuating colleges, things are getting a little more serious.

We won't mention the jump in acreage over the last twenty-four hours, either.

The most serious things that happened around here in the winds (so far, knock on tree limbs), has been that it took out an umbrella. With the table. Nothing broke. After a struggle I was able to upright the damn things and get the end of the 8-foot umbrella back in its pedestal. Oh, and lower the umbrella.

While I'm grateful they've added the cords and pulleys to raise and lower the umbrellas, couldn't someone figure out a landing system setup between the end of the umbrella and the base? 'Cause uugh. Took forever.

Yesterday was about Ideo slush and submission. That's right. I polished up one of my favorites (Paper Crane for those of you who know it) and flung it into the electron winds.

New market, too. Go me!

I thought this would ease my anxiety about the length of time of the other submission, but no. I chose a market that responds within a few days. Already I'm going, "Reject it, already! What's taking so long?!"

I've got to plan better than this.

Today is all about the sneezing. (I originally typed sneexing. I rather like that.) This is also due to the Santa Ana winds. *wonders if there is a correlation between her sneezing and fires in SoCal* You people who don't know my sneezing fits? Too bad. They're pretty close to Peter Rabbit's in the watering can. Multiplied by oh, a hundred or so.

Yes, my name is Marsha, and I am a chain sneezer.

Another day of sleeping late... woo! I convinced the Spousling to get up and feed the dog at 6:15 when he first woke me. Go me!

The rest of the day is cleaning the house (something I didn't do much of yesterday, because... well, why? No one was home to appreciate me doing it.) So I played until about 7:30P, and then went to bed to read. It was a very satisfying day.

Oh, and there's the part that's keeping track of the fire's progress. If it does move west, well, that's Fillmore. It's not nearly as weird as the year I could see the fires (flames!) topping the closest range from my classroom windows. That was probably a mile away. This one is still seven. So... I don't think we'll lose the town. Yet.

But I'll be glad when fire season is over and we can spend our time worrying about earthquakes instead.

*poke*poke*poke*poke*poke*¹

Whatcha doin'?

*poke*poke*poke*poke* Nothing. *poke*

But you have all those pins....

*poke*po— Uh-huh. —ke*poke*

And you're sticking them in that... doll.

*poke*poke*poke* Yep. *poke*

Anyone I know?

*poke* Maybe. *poke*poke*poke*

What did he (she?) do?

*poke*poke*poke*Poke*Poke*POKE* S/he's sitting on something of mine. *poke*poke*

Can't you just ask them to move?

*POKE*Poke*poke*Poke*poke*Poke*POKE* Keeping my hands busy is more restful. *poke*

*POKE* Besides, if this works? I'm going into business: Voodoo dolls for the editors in your life. *eyes doll* Oh! I forgot those. *Poke*poke*poke*POKE*Poke*

¹And you thought waiting for a response was bad for writers. Hah!

One voodoo doll for sale or rent.

Slightly used.

But hey, Sheila wants me to send her more, so that's a good thing.

(As long as none of you rat on me, I mean. *gives you all the hairy eyeball*)