My college campus was a stop on the commuter rail. You’d hear the whistle as the trains came and went, back and forth, shuttling people into the city in the mornings and back out again at night. Sometimes I’d be in class when that whistle would sound, and my mind would drift, wishing I was on my way in to Boston.

The city seemed so exciting to me, maybe because I’m from a small town. Maybe because I remember when I was small, my mother worked here in what we called “the Pregnant Building” for the way the bottom floors bumped up and out, then went back in. Even now, when I have a dream about walking in Boston, I almost always see that building there somewhere.

As I came out of Government Center yesterday, something about the air and the early morning light caught me up and sent me back to that. I can’t define it much more than this: it was one of those days that, if I’d been back in college, I’d absolutely have ditched classes and rode the train into town, like I did a few times back in the day. The air was cool, summer fading towards fall, clear blue sky promising a day that would be warm but not too hot. I wanted to go ramble through bookstores around Harvard Square and have lunch on the plaza in front of Trinity Church.

Instead, I had to keep going, across the street and into work. Stupid grown-up responsibilities.

I’ve worked in Boston for nearly nine years, and I’m not sick of it. The commute gets to me, sure, but that’s because the time I’m physically spending in Boston isn’t spent exploring the city.

One of my several writing projects is a story that takes place (at least at the beginning) in Boston. I’m realizing that when I ran it as a game several years ago, I didn’t really need to know the layout of the streets too accurately - my players were forgiving enough (and some were probably less knowledgeable about the city’s geography than I was.) Now that I’m working towards putting this in front of a larger audience (someday, maybe), that’s an aspect I’d like to make sure I get right.

Fairly early on, there’s a chase that begins in the North End. It’s ultimate destination is Cambridge, but the end of the flight can certainly end well before that. I’d like to try walking the paths the characters will take, or part of it, since I really don’t plan on travelling through sketchy alleys and hopping fences and getting arrested for trespassing. I’ll be bringing the camera along if I do this, so you’ll probably find yourselves on a photographic walking tour/preview sort of thing one of these days.

While I’m at it, might as well toss out a bit of a writing update, too. Anna’s backstory is finally done, which is nice. Took her long enough to tell it. Though, in finishing it, I was reminded of the intrinsic value of a good walk for unravelling plot threads. I was so close to finishing the final scene when it was time to shut down for the day. And, as much as the story was done, the way I was ending it felt too abrupt. So I got up, walked away, and played it out in my head on the way to the train.

I don’t even think I was out of the building before the true ending - the right one - came to me. From there, it was just a matter of spinning out the dialogue and typing it up. The final word count ended up over 17,000 words, 27 pages if I were to print it out. A bit longer than I’d intended, but a few scenes that I hadn’t originally planned demanded to be written, and I think they made the story better.

So, now on to outlining this new-old project (oh god, outlining. /hate). But one thing I’ve learned is, any time I’ve picked it up, I’ve gotten stuck on a particular scene. It’s something that needs to be there, but for whatever reason, I get the characters there and just… stall. In an hour of outlining it, though, I think I might have worked through the problem.

It was also kind of heartening, when I dusted off my old game notes (you don’t want to know the length of that file), I looked at a lot of the stuff I’d forgotten and thought, y’know? This isn’t half-bad.

So, there’s one thing getting a bit of a second wind, plus Lil, who’s rolling her eyes at me from her short story, a revisit of “Kate” sometime soon, and only about a hojillion things I owe other people for Davien, Threnn and Anna.

It’s a good kind of busy.

It’s funny, the last couple of weeks I’ve been more lax about checking the email address I use for submissions. I wasn’t expecting to hear back from Strange Horizons until sometime next month. Even still, I was checking it daily-ish, just in case, but every now and then I’d forget to look.

I must have checked it on Friday, but I didn’t look yesterday. Today, I logged in to find a reply from the editors.

I won’t keep you in suspense: they passed on “Kate.”

However, I was figuring on getting a form response - basically a variation on “Thanks, but it’s not right for us at this time,” since they’re probably pretty swamped with submissions. It’s not insulting to get one of those; there’s nothing to really read into it. Editors just plain don’t have the time to respond to every single thing they read - otherwise, nothing would ever get published. And, y’know, that’s bad.

BUT! The awesome part of this (yes, the awesome part of being rejected) is, the editor who responded took the time to say some really nice things about the story itself, and offered suggestions for improvement - where the story bogged down for her, a note on the ending. And in addition, she offered some awesome compliments on my writing, so I definitely don’t feel like it’s such a big ball of suck anymore.

So, “Kate” will have to go back into my to-be-worked on pile for now, because I really do agree with her comments. I’m not sure whether or not I’ll resubmit it to them when it’s done, at least not for a while. I’m very timid about the etiquette that goes along with follow-up submissions - she didn’t say “Take a look at these things and then resend it when they’re fixed,” so I’d feel kind of presumptuous, when it’s revised, to resubmit. Because, as she also said, ghost stories are really tough sells. They see a lot of them.

Anyway, yeah. Reworking, revisiting, and actually pretty okay with the rejection. And feeling some warm, fuzzy and huge respect towards the editors of Strange Horizons for such a gracious reply.

Last week was a long week for me. Very long, and filled with last minute scrambling. Also, lots of finger-pointing, as though I haven’t been saying You need this. No, more than that. Really. for the last three months at least - more like the last six or eight. There were some genuine moments of appreciation and sighs of relief when I delivered good news, but right now I’m having a hard time concentrating on those over some of the moments of nastiness.

I think it’s Generic Summer Burnout - seems like I always spend a few days wishing I was elsewhere at this time of year, and again as the new year starts. Neither do I help myself much by looking at neat places that are offering jobs I think I’d like to try - a bookstore in Cambridge offering full-time, a customer service/GM type position at Turbine for one of their MMOs (granted, WoW is the only MMO I play, but I bet I could do the job). But right now, I’m unwilling to take a pay cut and I’d be forfeiting any potential bonuses that might come from the last months of hell.

And damn it, I’m going to get more satisfaction out of this nightmare than just the gnashing of fangirl teeth (although that is at least a small balm, by itself.)

I had a pretty good weekend, at least. Started on Housework: The Decluttering and got my kitchen and study looking nice, plus a good chunk of laundry put away. I also went through a pile of comic books, separated them out by series, then put them in order. Now I can go through and see what numbers are missing (I’m sure there was a cat-related accident that made me have to throw some away a while back.) Though, I’m also fairly certain there’s at least another stack or two of comics hidden away somewhere - I found big gaps across several series, all the same month’s issues.

I need to buy longboxes to store them in. At least one, maybe two. Not that I have any idea where to put them…

It’s been a kind of listless week for writing so far, too. Several things I want to start, or continue, or finish, and yet whenever I open up their gdocs, I find myself just staring at the screen. I’ve partly overwhelmed myself, so I’m not quite sure where to start, or which one is shouting at me the loudest. Yesterday I thought it would be smart to simply go in chronological order. That didn’t go so well, either.

I’m feeling generally blah about my writing right now, too, which is never useful. On the one hand, as so many people have said whenever I bemoan how many titles on the bestseller lists are junk right now: if that kind of stuff can not only get published, but also succeed, it should be a comfort knowing that I can do better. But I’m frustrated by it and I think it’s getting under my skin enough that it’s been hard to write the last couple of days. Silly, I know, but there it is. What should be inspiring me to produce something better is instead making me look at my own stuff and wonder if I’m actually capable of doing better. It’s intimidating.

So, for the moment, while I could wait for the Muse to come kick me in the ass, she seems to have gone off on a bit of a jaunt. I’ll muddle through without her for a bit, pick something and stick to it and see what I can crank out that’s worth keeping in the meantime.

Just a bit of housekeeping today. Updated a few links over there on the side that I kept reminding myself to put up, and promptly kept forgetting to do.

I haven’t been up to anything terribly interesting. Garden’s still alive (but not doing science). There are more tomatoes, since my mother grew some from seeds and more of them sprouted than she’d expected. The great part of having your mom live ten minutes away? “Here, I don’t have room for these in my garden. Also, I’m pulling up my broccoli tomorrow because the deer and rabbits are eating it. Can I put it in here?”

A couple of the tomato plants have these tiny little tomatoes-to-be growing. They’re round and green and will hopefully someday taste awesome. A few summers ago, I happened to stop by my parents’ house when my mother was trying her hand at fried green tomatoes, fresh from the garden. (On occasion, I have awesome timing.) They came out really good. So, hopefully in a couple of weeks, I’ll be trying my hand at my own.

I submitted “Kate” to Strange Horizons on July 1st. Probably won’t hear anything until September. Cross your fingers for me.

I opened up “Running” and stared at Lil for a while last weekend, and she stared back at me. I have some better ideas of where the story is going for her, but I’m not quite ready to go back to it yet.

Also, I snagged tickets for Great Big Sea in October! /squeeeeee

It is very, very tempting to hop onto ye olde bandwagon and examine my writing process, as Lori and Deb are doing. I’m fascinated by both, partly because I can see similarities and differences between how they plan their writing and how I do.

I’m tempted to say that mine is planned not-at-all, but that’s not true. It’s just something I do so automatically, I suppose, that I’ve never really considered it a process. I’m awful with outlines. I have character spreadsheets all over the place, and snippets of story scrawled onto whatever paper I can find. (There is a stack of legal pads in my study, whose first several pages are all whatever I was working on when it was within reach. I should take a picture.)

There’s an ATM receipt that’s been in my purse for a year - that, much like my old hard drive - made the trip from one purse to another, actually. It has a snippet of conversation from a scene I’d planned on writing for Threnn nearly a year ago, but never got around to. I still like it, though. Four lines of dialogue, a thought, and a closing sentence, and I want to find somewhere to put them.

Though, my WoW writing has always been like that - scene by scene, not even what I’d necessarily call a short story, since what’s happening is so organic. Other people contribute to plotlines, and one simple line of dialogue from another character can make your carefully planned out story take a completely different turn (this is very rarely a Bad Thing, by the way.)

But the process of writing my other stuff, my I Wanna Get This Published Someday stuff, while it shares some similarities, also has more structure in my approach. I’m thinking that a closer examination of what I’m doing might actually make me progress better.

There are things that both of the ladies are doing that I’m curious to try, now, to see if adapting some of their techniques would work for me.

And of course (she says, resigned that yes, she’s going to pick up her dusty ol’ backpack and take a running leap onto that bandwagon as it comes around the bend), the question becomes, which project do I choose to yatter on about?

I’m a bad blogger.

I’ve been shirking my duties to entertain you lot, but for good reason!

First is work-related. There is a rant coming of epic proportions, and I’m trying to make it less angry-sales-rep-rawr and more constructive-advice-to-booksellers. But it’s tough right now since I’m still in the rawr phase. I’ll probably be in it for another month at least, but I’m hoping to get the post up this week.

Second is writing stuff (yay!). I’ve mentioned before that Annalea’s not terribly forthcoming with me. I have added notes and taken them away from her gdoc, trying desperately to figure out how the pieces of her puzzle fit together. She shuffles some around when I’m not looking, hides others in the cabinets, or under the plants, snatches one from my hand just as I see where it belongs and puts another in its place.

She’s mischievous like that.

I spent a good chunk of last week trying to pry a scene out of her, and finally posted it around 1:00 this morning. It was, I think, one of the hardest I’ve written for her in over a year. I know what happens from there on out, but this was a blank space - I knew the conversation had taken place, and that it hadn’t necessarily ended on an ideal note, but I didn’t know exactly what had been said.

It was awkward for her - Anna’s armor is, quite often, nothing more than her pride. Here she was, going to someone above her station, hat in hand, feeling as low as she ever had. It was hard getting it right for her - her words, her thoughts, her reactions. And the person she spoke with really isn’t the villain here, either (though the villain has made his appearance, now, finally), so it was tough to coax that bumbling chat out of him, too, and finding the line between him being an ass and simply coming from a different kind of mindset.

Of course, now that the scene is finished, Anna’s dangling another puzzle piece in front of me. She seems to have peeked over at the puzzle on her sister’s table and found a piece gathering dust. “I want to borrow him,” she’s saying, and Threnn’s too busy staring at something small and shiny and red to do more than shrug.

This hypothetical conversation between Anna and Robert Bell (a minor character who has appeared briefly several times in Threnn’s stories) came to me almost in its entirety as I was walking to get my coffee this morning. It’s a good one. Actually, it’s a very sweet one. I know I could take that puzzle piece from her, and if I turned it over in my hands, I’d have it done in less time than it’s taken to write this post.

But I don’t think it belongs in the story that I’m writing right now. It doesn’t hurt the tale, really, but I can’t say it quite fits, either. If it was a movie, it would be a deleted scene. I think it’s canon for her, because it’s the second time she’s tried co-opting this minor character that I’ve hitherto associated with Threnn, but I’m not so sure it’ll ever actually be written.

We’re going to argue about this, Anna and I, but I think she can see the other pieces wanting to fall into place, too, and this is a digression neither of us desperately need. The backstory is… nearly done. Two more posts/chapters/installments/whatever-you-call-them, maybe three, and then I’ll see about this other scene. If it’s anything as vivid as it is right this second, it’ll end up somewhere.

I have a folder called “Stuff the Author Knows” on my machine at home. It’s mostly for things I’ve cut out of my longer stories - worldbuilding stuff that I don’t want to forget, scenes that don’t fit anywhere now but might later on, characters who don’t quite belong to the story in which they first appeared. I’m starting to think I need to add one to my gdocs, too.

So, yeah. Bad blogger, no biscuit.

I have some. No, really, it was over there just a second ago…

There is a garden in my backyard. The onions and green beans seem to be casualties, and I have a feeling that once upon a time, there might have been some corn, too, only if it ever existed, all evidence of it has been wiped off the face of the planet.

There are, however, the beginnings of peppers (red, green, and jalapeno), and some promising looking tomato plants. And basil. My basil will take over the world. These things are thriving. I am envisioning tomato, basil and mozzarella salad, fresh from the garden later this summer. I’m not quite brave enough to try making my own mozzarella, but there is at least one really good Italian deli between my office and the train station where I can get some.

The pool is also open. The water is at, oh, 72 degrees. Which you’d think would be plenty warm enough. That’s room temperature, right? I stood there on Saturday, up to my waist, my legs going numb, and had to berate myself before I could dive in all the way (”You fucking wimp. Move.“) Rinse and repeat for Sunday. Once you’re in, though, it’s pretty nice. Now if only we can have some nice weekends this summer - my parents and extended family got more good swimming-time out of it last summer than we did. I’d like to not spend so many Saturdays staring forlornly out the window while it pours and thunders this year, thanks.

Writing: rrrgh. Some. Lori has linked to a shiny new tool on her blog, and I’m mulling over the idea of playing with it, too. Problem is, I’m working on three stories at once (”Four!” insists poor Lil, as the demon that’s been chasing her for several months cackles). All told, the three amount to about 11,000 words and none of them are finished. Threnn’s has maybe one more scene until she’s (mostly) caught up to the present. Anna has two stories going at once - from a year of near-silence to suddenly-won’t-shut-up - and they’re kind of coming out in alternating sections.

Lil’s only about 2,000 words into her run, out of… I’m aiming for 6,000 or less. So, if I do stick a counter up here, I suppose it makes more sense to wait until I go back to Lil.

It doesn’t help that one of my ficlets would like to possibly be something longer, either.

Here we are, in the middle of a heat wave, and my teeth are chattering. I can’t feel my fingers, and the tip of my nose went numb hours ago. As soon as May 1st rolls around, our office building turns on the air conditioning. It’s not a system based on the outside temperature, but on the day of the year.

They say they’re keeping it at 70 degrees. Which, I’m sure it is in the Offices of Important People.

But for lowbies like me, I need to bring sweaters and gloves into work in August. As much as I love my little spot in the corner by the supply closet (that isn’t sarcasm; I like it here. No one ever visits), I am also right beneath one of the air conditioning vents. So it’s not just cold air skirling about insidiously. It’s not a cold that creeps, and makes me shiver by increments. Oh, no, it’s a full-on icy gale blowing down on the top of my head, and there’s nowhere I can move to get away from it. I can’t even wait until everyone’s gone home for the day and climb up, ninja-like, atop my overhead bins to close the vent on my side. It’s one of those permanently-open ones.

Tonight, I’m going to find my fuzzy sweater and bring it with me to bundle up for the rest of the summer.

Other stuff I’ve been doing instead of blogging:

I planted a garden. Yes, me, the Bane of Things That Grow. It’s not a very big garden, just yet, and I’m not even sure everything will survive. See, initially, I figured I’d grow some herbs in window boxes, so I could have them well into the fall. When I was out buying the flats of herbs, I saw some tomatoes.

I can grow tomatoes. I’ve done really well with them in the past. Since flats were something like 8 for $12, I went a little overboard - peppers (red, green, jalapeno), onions, butternut squash and green beans. I figured they could all go into big ol’ pots and do just fine.

Well. Somehow I forgot that when you buy a flat, you’re not just buying one pepper plant. You’re buying anywhere from 4-6. Big ol’ pots just won’t cut it.

My father, who owns just about every tool known to man (or if he doesn’t, knows someone within three houses to either side of him who will let him borrow theirs), has a roto-tiller. Down he came, last Saturday when it was super wicked hot, and tilled the little garden my mother and I had sectioned off with leftover paving bricks during the Home Improvement Hell a couple of summers ago.

I couldn’t just go ahead and plant when he was done, though. We have some pretty stubborn grass that had grown in that spot, so I had to go through on my hands and knees and get rid of the stuff the roto-tiller couldn’t. By the end of the day, I was pretty disgusting. No planting got done.

Sunday, Red Sox game in the afternoon (Poppacow, this is for you: WOOOO-HOOOOO GO SAWX!), and then it was nearly dark when we got home. I was too gorram hot and tired to go out and plant.

Which leads us to last night. Got home, changed out of the work clothes, found my trowel and lugged my sad potted vegetables-to-be out to the back. Stuck ‘em in the ground. I think the squash and the green beans are pretty dead. The window boxes that were their temporary homes didn’t have holes for water to leak out, and they were in there while it rained for three days straight.

Funny thing is, I usually kill plants by not watering them enough, and here I’ve gone and drowned the squash and beans.

Go on, laugh.

Tonight, I’m going to give the herbs a little more room. Now that I have a couple of window boxes freed up, let’s see if I can separate out the basil without destroying it.

Aside from that, I’ve been plinking away at three stories at once, with a third waiting patiently in the back of my head. I think it knows better than to try competing for attention against the al’Cair women, but every once in a while it passes me a note that says, “Ahem, you think that when I’m done, I might be worth submitting to Escape Pod. Let’s not forget that, yeah?”

So, productivity in a couple of forms. Maybe I’ll break out the camera and put some pictures of the fledgling garden up here. You guys can have virtual conversations with my tomatoes, and maybe they’ll hear you and grow into tasty edible things.

I’ve been horribly neglectful with the postings, both here and at the book blog. But, I’ve been doing a bit of writing recently, so I’m going to go ahead and forgive myself. I hope you’ll forgive me, too. It’s mostly WoW-related stuff. I’m eyeing my short story sidelong, kind of pretending it’s not there, in the hopes that it’ll start talking to me and demanding attention.

Right now, I think it’s doing the same thing to me.

Maybe the idea of stories and characters taking on personalities of their own sounds odd, but there’s truth to it. I’m not going to go quite as far as using the metaphor of stories/books as babies (especially since, when the manuscript’s done, you’re probably sending it off to the slush pile - a place where it will be stacked atop many other manuscripts in a storeroom or a closet or some editor’s floor and largely ignored for a very long time. Do that sort of thing to a kid and someone’s going to call social services…)

However, there are ideas that sometimes come so randomly that, even though they came from somewhere in our writerly heads, we’re not quite sure how they got there.

Lori lets me know I’m not alone in this:

Last night as I was brushing my teeth, “Crowmaker” wandered into the bathroom and tugged at my sleeve and said, “Hey, I think I wanna grow up to be a novel. Just think about it, OK?”

It’s so true. They do things like that all the time. Years ago (warning: gamer-geek jargon ahead), while I was setting up my list of NPCs for a game I was running (Mage: The Ascension, for the curious), someone who was supposed to be just a throw-away character decided she wanted a bigger role.

It went something like…

Me: Okay, T.C. Garrett. Verbena. White hair, weird blend of fashionista and hippie chick.
T.C.: Psst. I have wings.
Me: No, you don’t. You’re going to help bring Maddy to meet the group, and then you’re going to be forgotten.
T.C.: Wings and a glowy sword.
Me: No, you don’t. Go sit over there with Clay and Caroline. I’m done with you.
T.C.: Also, I’m an angel.
Me: No, you fucking aren’t.
T.C.: Yes I am. I’m in charge of guarding the kid.
Me: No, you… oh, hey, wait. That might be kind of cool.
T.C.: *smug*

She turned out to be a pretty cool character.

So, sometimes, when ideas come like that, it’s worth listening to them. Which is why my posting has been non-existant the last week or so. Blogging can often be productive, but there are times when it’s merely cat vacuuming. I have to find the balance between the two.