HOUSEKEEPING WEEK?

This was supposed to be the week I got that list of *crap* done -- you know the list... that pile of papers that has to be filed, or tossed, or shredded... the pile of projects that will never be done - finish them, pitch them - just put the art room out of its misery! One more run through the kids' clothes; see what they need for school; plan that dreaded trip to town for clothes that are impossible to find because I am blessed with skinny children; find all of the library books collecting dust in the corners of the house as well as fines at our little library...

I also have a list of things to do around the internet... update the blogs, especially the family one that has been really neglected this summer. I want to update my list of blogs on here -- the ones to follow for the business of writing, the reference blogs, the websites of authors and friends. So much to do!!!!

But what I really want to be doing is working on the revisions for EMERALD CAVE. Somehow it all has to happen, but I just picked up another little boy to babysit, which means my one week without my regular 5yo client (who is on vacation) coughed up a new 5yo client.

So I will keep my eye on the ball. And the calendar, because there is only one more week of summer for my second-graders who start on September 7, and then ALL THREE of my kindergarteners start on September 13. And that means one thing: bus at 7:30, then I have a date with my DUSTY treadmill, a shower, and I am free from around 9 a.m. to 2:30 in the afternoon.
Five and a half hours.
No children.
Only me to feed.
May I have a moment of silence...
*cue the angels singing*

SUPER GIANT BUBBLES

First at the library.....

And then at home....

My kids learned to make GIANT BUBBLES at the library last year during the summer reading program, but I think we may need bigger wands....

:-)

Check out THESE gigantic bubbles!!!!!

*SUPER GIANT BUBBLES*

I definitely have bubbles on the brain!!!!

NEW THOUGHTS ON EMERALD CAVE

I have started revising THE KEEPERS OF THE EMERALD CAVE and have come to the conclusion that while I may not be writing a story brimming with teen angst, the family issues and relationships, as well as the humor and situations, are too high above the Middle-Grade level, so I have decided to plant it firmly in the Young Adult camp.

So now my job is to go ahead and keep revising at this point, because I still need to patch the same plot holes in the earlier scenes and work my way back up to where I left off -- and then add the final act, most likely another 20 scenes or so. It's sitting at 42K words and I would like to see it closer to 65K for YA.

I was freaking out slightly while the Write On Con was happening, because the gist from the agents on queries their offices are receiving right now is there is glut of vampires, werewolves, angels/demons, and witches. I wrote an email to Catherine A. Marshall, who is an author but also works as an intern for a literary agent, and asked her is it the witch thing (covens, spells, Wicca, cauldrons, etc.) or magic that is overdone right now, and she sent back the most amazing answer that completely re-energized me -- I explained how my characters don't *do* magic, they simply *are* magic. I explained about my Bubble Rangers, Time Benders and the Domains, and how they are linked together and to the environment of the Pacific Northwest, and she called them "ecological superheroes!" I almost cried, because that is exactly what they are!! *WOOP*

So I am *ENERGIZED* and ready to finish my manuscript!!!!

Right after I make my daughter's Adoption Day cake for a little party tomorrow....
:-)
Peace.

REVISING...

Nothing much to report here, except I rewrote the beginning of EMERALD CAVE last night:

The beauty of a thousand flowers could not compete with the sight of fish flying through the air.

“One albacore...heyyyyy-yahhhhh!”

Hundreds of eyes were on the tuna sailing over the counter, landing neatly in the hands of a tattooed fish monger. Denim River ducked just in time. One wrong move in Seattle’s Pike Place Market could get you nailed with a twenty-pound chicken of the sea. He dodged the laughing tourists but smelled the lattes in their cups and the freshly baked baguettes in their paper sacks. His stomach growled. Why on earth did he skip breakfast?

Denim River left the fish behind and pushed through the crowd, heading for the side of the market where the flowers sellers sold their colorful wares. He saw his grandpa setting up his table, preparing for another street show full of nothing but bubbles and hullabaloo. Naveen River, or G-Naveen to nearly everyone, was Seattle’s famous Bubble Ranger, and he always said his bubbles looked better in front of the flowers, not the flying fish.

Denim stepped up in time to button a black velvet cape around his grandpa’s thin neck. As tools of the trade go, G-Naveen’s cape, crisp white shirt, cinnamon-hued vest, as well as his ever-present bubble pipe, were just as important to the Bubble Ranger’s show as the River family secret.

The secret.

The curse is more like it.

I am still unsure of where my story sits. If it is MG, it would be upper-MG. I signed up for Write On Con, an online writing conference for authors of kidlit: picture books, middle grade, and young adult, but am not super-excited about the results so far. Only two critiques on my first five pages, but no one seems to be getting more than 3 or 4 critiques, so it's not just me.

So I will not worry about it and keep working. If my brain would kick into gear. We actually saw the sun yesterday, but today it's gone once again, leaving our world in dim, cloudy and cool permanent Nap Zone. More coffee. Need more coffee.

OKAY, SWITCHING GEARS...

Late last night I finished with the major story arc in EMERALD CAVE and realized that I was at a stopping point where I *must* decide whether it will be a middle-grade or a young-adult novel, and that means one thing -- time for Revision Number 1!!
:-)
At 42,000 words, if it is an MG, I won't want to add any more story at this point. I would simply wrap it up now and leave the rest of the adventures in my brain for Book 2, gaining a few more thousand words through the revision and final editing process. This would bring the final word count up closer to 50,000 which is in the realm of the desired MG length.

But, if I should decide EMERALD CAVE is a YA, I still need to go back and work on revisions (because there are SO many pot holes and busted links in the first 42K words), but I would also outline another 20K, weaving the rest of the story into the beginning, bringing the final word count up to 70-80K.

*YAH* -- book math!! haha

So...that is the story...and now it's back to revising!
Peace.

Hmmm... GOOD NEWS OR BAD?

Okay, so I will admit it -- I haven't yet read the Percy Jackson books. I have been writing my story, and so this is writing time... *between* writing books is reading time. So I have been happily writing my EMERALD CAVE novel, knowing it's most likely a young adult novel, but also having the feeling that it could be a middle grade novel... and then I rent the Percy Jackson movie today.

I have only watched the first fifteen minutes or so, but enough to realize it's also an urban fantasy, and the MC is a 15-year-old boy. My first thought was, "THAT IS TOO MUCH LIKE MY BOOK!!! AGHHHH!!!!!"

But after I kept watching it, I realized it's nothing like my book. I don't have any ancient ANYTHING in my book, much less a whole slew of ancient Greek mythical creatures... holy shit, that would mean actual research about an entire subject I really don't have any interest in, so that's something. Also, the protag has no idea where he came from -- he doesn't know he is Neptune's son and that he has magical powers (or whatever he has going on... I just started watching it).

So my Denim is very different. The city is different, the powers are different, the whole world I have built is different. Denim has family on his side, the motivations and magic go back generations, but they are all legends, ideas, and relationships I have created. *whew*

Although, much of my first book takes place near an alpine lake high in the Cascade Mountains of Washington that looks a little too much like the lake where all of the mythical and mixed-blood demigods were practicing their swordplay in Percy's movie.
Stupid British Columbia and it's cheap filming locations.
Kidding!! (Sort of!!)
LOL

Okay. I will withhold my true thoughts until after I get my hands on an actual Percy Jackson book and read it. The actor is adorable, though, and makes me wonder if my ms ever gets to that point...what would my actors look like?? Hopefully by then the whole Justin Bieber anti-gravity side-hair thing will be over.

Happy writing/reading/dancing/singing...
Peace.

NEW BLOG PAGE DESIGN

Still slightly under construction, but this a test to check my new little fancy signature. LOL

JUSTIN BIEBER'S MEMOIR???

All the rage on Twitter right now is what on earth is going on in this world if the likes of 16-year-old Justin Bieber is getting a book deal for a MEMOIR.... good grief..... But then I thought about it and 16 is old enough to have done quite a bit. In reponse to Nathan Bransford asking what his followers' memoirs would look like, I wrote this...and there's so much more, trust me! (Nathan's one-liner of a memoir was not as exciting, btw.)

When I was 16 I left Illinois to live in the Philippines as an exchange student. I ate rice and mangoes every day, drank Coke out of plastic bags with straws, avoided gigantic hovering flies while walking through rice paddies every morning to get to the main road to catch a Jeepney for my ride to school. *Para ho!!*

I managed to avoid the flying cockroaches in the shower, lived with one family who owned Dunkin' Donuts of the Philippines, and another family had 10 children and lived in a mansion with a log sort yard out back. I received a handful of love notes every day from the boys at school and spent way too much time sharing the tsismis with my barkada.

I ate a cold fried chicken and potato salad lunch with missionaries inside a volcano and watched a rain cloud change direction in the middle of the lake to put out a house fire on the far side of the caldera.

I represented the United States in the little United Nations show my school put on, watched my classmates run through their military exercises on Saturday mornings in full uniform and learned the Philippine national anthem in Tagalog. I can still sing the San Miguel beer jingle in Tagalog, which is always fun at parties.

I didn't even get to the day when we went to the beach and saw people tanned to a dark leather color. They were fishermen and lived in those houses built on stilts, perched right on the beach. They were the only Filipinos I saw who were not concerned with having dark skin. Everyone else used umbrellas to stay out of the sun. The beaches had white sand and were empty of tourists, but you had to wear Keds tennis shoes or the coral would rip your feet to shreds. I also went to a Cambodian refugee camp where I saw a giant tent city and sat on the floor of one temporary home and had the most amazing meal I'd ever had in my life. We drove through riots when Benigno Aquino tried to come home to the Philippines and was shot and murdered while debarking his plane in Manila, causing an instant uproar throughout the country and eventually leading to the Marcos family being tossed out on their asses for stealing nearly all of the country's money. Imelda needed shoes, don't you know??? It also rained every day at 4 p.m. and the clouds always looked like ginormous piles of mashed potatoes.

IN OTHER NEWS:

I am nearly at 35,000 words for THE KEEPERS OF THE EMERALD CAVE. I am reading it now making some notes in the margin I have been meaning to jot down for a few weeks. I have so many threads running through the story, and I have to have them match up at some point... I feel like my brain is going to unravel when I try and remember it all. Write it down.
I am vascillating over whether it is an MG or YA. I just don't know yet. Revisions will tell.

Also, our family blog has mysteriously disappeared (http://www.underthemistymountain.com/) although it is still in my dashboard, and I can access the different behind-the-scenes windows to work on the blog -- I even posted a test post today, but when I click to view the blog? Error message. Blogger may be working on their system somewhere and have caused a hitch in my git-along, or it may be fatal, I don't know yet. I went ahead and archived all of my blogs onto my hard drive (including the missing one and it worked), so we will see.