bookmark_borderSynopsis

I dislike synopsis. Synopsi? Anyway, I hate writing those things. I spent most of the day working on one for my novel To Sleep. It was too wordy, too relaxed, too….something. Then someone over at Lesbian Fiction Forum said to check to see what the publisher requires as some state the length. Whoo Hoo! RCE doesn’t require one! Happy dance.

I’ll still do one, I just won’t make it all pretty. I will submit a brief ‘plot summary’ however. A synopsis is quite useful before and after writing a book. It helps you to see any plot gaps or problems. For one, there’s a lot going on in this novel. Not quite too much, but close. The idea is to not overwhelm the reader but also not put them to sleep. It’s a delicate dance especially with science fiction.

When I have something finalized, I’ll let y’all know. My goal is to have the novel submitted by the end of this month. But I’ve got a toothache and came home from Minneapolis with a stomach bug. Yay. But I am working on it. I am editing and using the beta reader’s input as I go.

bookmark_borderTales from the Office

To start off this tale, I must make a confession. Perhaps a re-confession because surely I’ve mentioned this before. I’m a tough butch. Except when it comes to moths. Spiders, I’ll scream like a girl but moths? I break out in a sweat and run. I’ll pull sticks out of wounds, dig in a dog’s mouth for something they shouldn’t have, and I pull off the large ticks that Lorna just won’t touch. But moths? I am so out of there.

We moved my office into a room we call the Rose Room. We call it that because, when we bought the place, that room had this fugly wallpaper with these huge roses. Lorna says they are cabbage roses. Whatever. It was peeling, ugly, and pink.

The Rose Room is in the back corner of the house. We’d never really used it for much. When we first moved here, it was a guest room. We said it was my room (in case anyone asked; but remember, this was 1992. AIDS and homophobia was a huge deal then; and our first home insurance company dropped us for no reason after a house “inspection” six months after we moved in. We later found out that they had a policy to not insure any homosexuals.). After a few years we said fuck ’em and it became a storage room. Someone else needed the bed so off that went. We used to foster critters and when we had cats, that’s where they stayed. It had no outlets and no light switch. The huge windows were held in place by spider webs and cracked caulk. We took the wallpaper down on two walls but finally gave up. We counted about six layers of wallpaper including this silvery metallic stuff we have found all throughout the house. It must have been lovely (she says sarcastically). One one wall we found the Saturday Evening Post from 1903. On another wall, we found old newspapers from the Asheville Citizen Times. We peeled off a huge chunk that turned out to be the entire front page. It declared “President Harding is Dead“. We have samples from the newspaper and magazine in storage. Some day we’ll frame them and up them up in here.

Like I said, we hadn’t used it much in a very long time. Now I’ve had my office in here for just about 2yrs. We are in the process of moving it again but that’s another story. Over that time span, I learned a lot about this old house. It creaks, groans, clanks, and thumps. So much so that I started saying we have someone living in our attic. It’s a fairly large space so it would be possible (except they’d cook in the summer).

Now back to the moths. Last summer, one got into the house and came to where the only light was: the office. It was a huge thing. It came charging into the room, hit the wall near me, and thudded to the floor. I hit reverse on my chair and was trying to get out without squishing it (don’t want moth guts on my wheels!). Mike comes over and is investigating it while I’m sweating because I just KNOW that son of a moth was going to jump on me. Then it does it’s buzzing thing and Mike goes charging out of the room. The damn thing starts ricocheting around the room, smashing into walls, the ceiling fan, and the window. At that point, I make it out and go get Lorna. It is, like, 2am and bless her heart, she was sleeping. I had slammed the door shut when I left so I knew the damn thing was in there. But we couldn’t find it. We looked everywhere. Lorna was thinking I was imagining things except Mike won’t come back into the room. He stood in the hall and peeked around the corner. That’s my big brave boy.

She finally goes back to bed and I go back into the office. I am wired by then and am thinking if I sit in here all innocent-like, it’d come out of hiding and I’d smash it. I had shoes now. I finally go to bed but shut the door hoping to keep the beast in there. After I get up, I go in and it starts buzzing again. I grab Lorna and we find it. It was HUGE. It was one of those moths with the harder and much larger body. Not as big as a Luna moth but still damn big.

With me so far?

Also last summer was when I started smelling something strange. Something I had smelled before but not in a long time. Marijuana. Either something else had that smell (no, it wasn’t my moth killing shoes) or we had a neighbor smokin’ the wacky weed. Although how the smell traveled all the way to the house, I dunno.

This is where I put all the clues together.

I decided that there was a pot smoking moth living in my attic. Seriously. It fit the profile! Noise, smell, and the size of that moth. Add it together yourself.

We’ve never had another moth like that one come in (thank jeebus). I think it’s because the things are too stoned.

bookmark_border22 Years of Subversion

22 years. That’s how long Lorna and I have been undermining heterosexual marriage. The existence of our relationship had been detrimental to so many heterosexual marriages and is part of the reason the divorce rate is at least 50% now. We take full responsibility for it.

Today is our 22nd anniversary. We celebrate the day we met (on 8th and Market in Philadelphia), June 23, 1990. Wow. Lots of things have happened since then. I was but a young 25, she was a young-ish 38. Several years after we met, we teased each other and said we would have a 38 yr contract (so that Lorna had been with me half her life). Sixteen more to go. Think we will make it?

bookmark_borderWeird Nocturnal Sound

We live out in a rural area. Open fields and small groups of trees, no real ‘forest’ any more. Where our house is, we’re in this dip, in a bowl like space, and sound echos. We hear our neighbors as if they were standing in our yard. Across the road (which is about level to the roof of our house), they have a pipe that drips water into an old bathtub. This is for the handful of cattle they have. Sometimes, we hear that water as if I am standing on the from porch, pouring it.

We’ve heard owls before here, mostly screech owls (which sound very creepy). But lately, this makes the third night, we hear this extremely weird call. The first night, we think someone is screaming, or calling out. Then we thought it was a weird house alarm or some dying dog. Whatever it was, it sounded as it if was in the front yard which means it could be anywhere within a square mile. It is really weird. Second night, about a week later, it only called out a few times. And tonight it did it again. I happened to be up (yes, at 4am; not been to bed yet) so I grabbed my iPod Touch and went out to the front porch.

The first time we heard it, it stopped when it heard me shut the front door. Which makes me think it was really close. This time, it was more distant and it didn’t stop. I recorded a few seconds out front then went to the back porch and recorded some more. Armed with that, I went online (Google is our friend) and I *think* it is a Great Horned Owl. Which would be way cool.

Here’s the sound from the front porch (it is raining and the calls have a dog down in the ‘trailer estates’ barking)

Here’s from the back porch (every time I thought it had stopped, I turned the iPod so I could turn it off but then it would start again. hence the scratching noises near the end).

Now, compare to this: (source – The Owl Pages)
Owlet calling for food
male squawk

What do y’all think?

bookmark_borderWorking On Another

Yep, couldn’t resist. I’m working on the second (and most likely last) sequel to To Sleep. It is a true sequel in that it won’t make much sense if you’ve not read the first. I’ve tried to not do much “As you know, Bob” stuff but in some places it can’t be helped.

The book is called The Awakening although that will change. That may be what I call the second half of To Sleep. It starts about 2 yrs after the end of the first. So far it feels rather dry and boring. But I am just getting a feel for where it is going. And I’m not sure where it is going. I got a general idea of what I want to happen but not too sure how it will end. Weird, right?

To Sleep is still with the beta readers. No word from them so maybe that’s a good thing?

Worked out in the yard today. I’m exhausted and sore. We wanted to plant some plants (duh) but when we started to clear a spot, we kept finding rocks and brick. Yes, bricks. Old old bricks. We had this problem before there but this was worse. We got this wee little spot clear but found a ton of rocks. A lot of them were flat, like they were paving stone or something. Very bizarre. I may take photos of them tomorrow.