Me

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Alive, busy, boring--?

Haven't seen new HP film yet. Busy with family stuff this weekend, no chance. Probably this week. Have already discussed how next Saturday will be handled between me and Nicholas. He will be getting his copy of Deadly Hollows about when I will be getting up. I have no idea what time Amazon will deliver our two copies, but I know the second Nick gets home (this after writing a huge Stats test--if he does well I'll let him buy the book...ha ha ha. As if I have THAT kind of control over him?

I wish.

Anyway. Claire and puppy just got into it. I think he bit her too hard. Gotta stand back and let her do the punishing, which isn't that fierce. Maddox gets the message though and leaves her alone. For now. He'll be back...

ANYWAY....

Nick will commence with devouring the book. I am sure that will be around 2:00ish German time, 7:00ish my time. He will have quite the head start, and I choose not to practically eat the pages in my hurry to finish, but I *am* planning on reading as much as I can on Saturday. Pup has a checkup though and that must be attended to at 9 a.m. Little scamp has grown to 12 lbs. now. Was 7 when we got him home. Oh my. So, Nick will be even FURTHER ahead by the time I get home from the vet's. Shoot probably won't even have my book until I get home from there, so then, once I have lunch, I'll get started reading.

I pretty much accept that Nick will tell me what happens, whether he wants to or not. I love him though so I will let him burst out with his thoughts, and enjoy every second of that. He about freaked when he went to the movie with his friends Britta and Eleven (okay, Evelyn, but I keep accidentally calling her Eleven) and they really didn't get it, not being HP fans. Imagine coming into such a series of movies with not knowing anything about the subtleties that one can only truly glean from the books themselves. No way could they understand that man Snape. Seriously. So Nick was just about to burst apart when he finally got home and we could talk about it. LOL. I loved it.

So, yeah, especially if Snape bites it, I expect I will find out what happens before I read it. I'm okay with that, as long as it is learning it from Nick or my daughter, who will also be devouring the book.

I expect LJ will be very very dead this weekend.

Other stuff, work is getting intriguing. My counterpart in Topeka has been let go (due to health reasons--she got her disability finally) and 'more' is coming down to me. Now, that is all well and good but I am not happy with alot of things and the way the new people up there are handling them. Just causing more work for everyone. Growl. Frankly, if I don't see a promotion coming my way soon, I may just start to seriously grumble. Lots. Getting me help is proving almost impossible, too. Chris the boss can't find anyone smart enough.

I am serious.

And now for some rambly thoughts that don't need to really be shared but I am writing them down anyway because I want to.



I had the best writing day today than I've had in months. Months!

I'm using my big computer again, and I've got my music going, the music that always puts me into a great writing mood, especially for fantasy. Any soundtrack by Hans Zimmer (and Lisa Gerrard together with Zimmer).

Why fantasy, Carolyn? I thought it makes you growl... Well, it does. Except for a handful of authors, it does. So much of it that I pick up just makes me wanna scream over either the quality of the writing or the sameness of plot, but when I find something I like--I really REALLY like it.

I'm trying something out, based on something Nick told me about some time ago. Perhaps he won't even remember, but I do, about the third sex. When I started to write fantasy I admit freely I was deep into the gayboi scene, and it showed. I know I can't--and don't want to--take that direction anymore. Was it a phase? Perhaps. (I still like writing m/m relationships, and I have another story in mind for my Loose-Id publisher but it is definitely not fantasy.)

Anyway, I wrote my entire fantasy idea based on a m/m relationship, and I no longer want it to be like that. Just don't. (maybe it WAS a phase) But I didn't know what to do with it to fix it (making my Matti a girl just didn't work, thanks) until Nick told me a few things he'd been studying in sexmed, I think that was the class (maybe) and a lightbulb went off what I could do.

So, that was one problem solved. My next problem was the quandry of confusion I put myself into--trying to figure out WHY I write the way I do. Evelyn has read a couple of my things and could see a similarity in style despite the two vastly different subjects. I am not dismayed by that really, I am intrigued.

For a long time I've resented the way I naturally write. I want to write deep meaningful dark things, I want to write Something Important, Amazing, and well, literary!!!! (like A Thousand Splendid Suns, for instance. Kite Runner. Yeah. Important. The kind of stories that bring people in droves to listen to the author speak.) But yet, what I write--what I am happiest writing--is, well, fantasy. Not that fantasy can't be wildly popular (HP, after all, is fantasy though not Important) but I think I am finally coming to accept that I write what I write best because it is what I should be writing. Does that make sense? Of course not. It is a jumble in my mind, but I will tell you what, I am very good at arguing with myself about it.

Write what you love, they say, and what I love is a story with a nice gentle boy main character, thrown into a tough situation that makes him grow up. Coming of age stories, in other words. If I am not writing in first, I like several POV's, yes even multiple if there aren't too many, I like a strong woman, and yes I like alternative sexualities. I like taking a character and grinding him down hard before giving him what is needed to bring him back. I love my world of Murron that I have built in my mind and on paper for the last six years. Yes, six years. I love the characters of that world--Jax, Matti, Avery, Milandria, Hannalore, Levan, Uncier, Dahmian, Vyn, Sherdin, Amaryss/Ryss, Jarrett, Biassa, and my beloved Raif and Gregorii. Damn I miss all those guys. And Sorin, can't forget Sorin and Aasdrin the goofy shapeshifting wolfhounds. I miss them all and the world they populate, the vastly different and not all-good cities of beautiful Laldafair and Albasterii, Althan and its matriarch society, hard-working Breith that falls in the very beginning, the Faan cities of Wyntar and Kaith, Sully and Inad, despicable city that they are, and even the stark desert country of Dakarai that produced the evil Uncier and his son Dahmian, and my favorite Crimson Rider, One-Eye. She is an amazingly fun evil person to write.

Oh yes, I love it all.

So, Carolyn, why did you stop writing these people if you love them so much? Know so much? Have so damn much figured out, including their societies, religions, histories, and plots for four books?

Mainly? For the same reason this journal now exists.

Sadly, many years ago I was friends with someone who is no longer here. I do owe her and will always be grateful to her for opening the door to fantasy and teaching me so much back when I needed it, back when I was the person I was then. But, over time, strange things came to happen between us, and her reactions to my writing became stranger and stranger. And, to me (it was pointed out by many who knew us both that the stronger and happier I got, the worse my relationship with her got, the more difficult it got. Yes, I believe that was so). There is no need to explain more here as that is the past, but in the end, what she had helped me create and come to love, she also helped destroy my love for. Did she mean to do it? I can't answer that. I don't know, but it will always be in the back of my mind. There were two players in this story, and my own reactions to her criticisms about everything I wrote were based on my own past, my own feelings, my own thoughts. But in the end, she told me and made me believe (gosh I was vulnerable then--not the same woman I am now) I believed when she said 'you are doing this all wrong, Caro.'

If anyone ever calls me Caro again, I will slay them.

But my reaction to this criticism was, again, based on the person I was then, a hell of a lot more fragile than I am now, this being the time period of my husband's surgery and following illnesses and his ultimate death. So, I shut it down, ended the whole thing, believing I was wrong, she was right, it was not any good, it was all wrong, would never sell like that, etc. etc.

I've been fumbling ever since. Really. I've written a few things--Red being the most rewarding, and Free was also a blast--but other than those two, I've stopped and started so many different things in so many different genres it is pathetic. Always searching for that story that would make me happy like Red did...like writing AF (the first of the fantasies) did. I've also let myself feel pressure from others when I shouldn't (you should be writing this, you should be writing mystery of course, that's where you had your success...), and wanting to please others instead of pleasing myself first.

What IS up with that, anyway?

And always, it never works. Why? Because I am not writing what I want to write!

And what I want to write is the story, are the stories, that have haunted me for six years now. They are sweet, they are romantic, they are sexual, they are dark, they are brutal, they are funny and quirky and they are harsh and at times very very cruel. But they are original, and mine.

I started back to them today.

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great game, wasn't it? Ski Run!!!!