Author name: Sandra Tayler

Gatecrashing and Guest Posting

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Yesterday and today we’ve been gatecrashing the Cascade Writer’s Conference. I suppose it is not technically gatecrashing, when the conference organizer is so kindly giving us badges and anything else that we need. Mostly we’ve been dividing our time between fantastic conversations and writing words. Howard hopes to finish this weekend with a full draft of his next Rune Wright story. I’ll be happy with some progress on the Amelia outline. We’ve already had some very useful business conversations, which is not at all what we expected from the weekend. This evening is Jay Wake at which I expect to both laugh and cry.

In the meantime, I have an essay up on Segullah as a guest post. 100% is Not Available in which I talk about parenting, weariness, and grace.

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A Quick Rant About Things Broken

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I am very grateful that all of the things continued to work during the years when we were constantly terrified that we would run out of money. I am glad that we have the necessary money this year when all of the things are breaking.

But I am tired of surprise expenses.
Teeth are expensive, air conditioning is expensive; furnaces, doctor’s appointments, diagnostic appointments, vehicles, furniture, vacuum cleaners, computer repair, and dishwashers–all expensive.

That is all.

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Evaluating My Summer

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There are days when it is very easy for me to identify all the places in my life where I could be doing better. This would seem like a good thing, not being blind to the need to improve. It would surely be worse if I woke after my kids, let them play on computers all day, expected them to forage through (well-stocked) cupboards for their own meals, and did not realize that this pattern of behavior counted as sub-par parenting. As a short-term rest from Mom always being in their faces expecting chores and homework, my kids welcome this laissez faire style, but over the long haul it is not good for them. They need structure, regular bedtimes, meals, or it can get perilously Lord-of-the-flies-ish around here. So I was noticing the need to improve my parenting game. I opted to take the kids on an outing. We went to a “Fun Arcade” to which we have passes. The kids did have fun there, playing laser tag, driving go carts, steering bumper boats. I had a sort of fun too while I watched them and took some pictures. Yet we all came home cranky and in dire need to be far away from crowds of people and noise. I brought home a lovely headache. Mission accomplished. Sort of.

The plan was for the outing to occupy the morning and I would get business tasks done in the afternoon. Yet I had real difficulty re-engaging my business brain. I’d opened up my long parenting thoughts, spent a morning thinking of the other outings and things we’d like to do this summer. I mused upon ways that I could spend time with my kids and enrich their lives. Those thoughts filled my brain and did not want to be tucked away so that I could answer emails. I was stressfully aware of all work waiting on my attention, but unable to focus on a particular task enough to complete it. This, of course, sent me into an existential despair. obviously I can not possibly be a good mother and a good business owner simultaneously. The best I can manage is a haphazard rotation. I would long for the return of school, when there was more separation between the parenting and the business management, but I quite clearly remember how much I was looking forward to having less schedule for the summer.

I spoke today with a friend about the state of publishing and her current strategy for revising and submitting books. Her assessment of how the business of publishing is currently running was sound to me, but rather discouraging considering the types of things that I write and the speed at which I write them. I don’t write best-seller material, or at least I haven’t yet. My publishing career may never take of because of a hundred factors out of my control. Yet only a few days ago I spilled angst on these subjects and decided to write anyway because I have stories that I want to tell whether or not they ever gain a wide audience. The size of the audience is not how to measure the worth of a story. So I focus on the work itself, not where I think the work will take me, or what public appraisal of the work will bring to me. It is me and the words, me and the story. Those are the things that matter.

After my friend left, I looked over to my kids who were wearing headphones and clicking with their computer mouses. I walked over and kissed the tops of their heads. They didn’t even flinch, because that is a normal thing for me to do. They live in confidence that they are loved, that the cupboards will have food, that we’ll all attend church together, that if they have a problem, or a scratch, or a random thought, they can find Mom or Dad and tell us about it. They usually have to dig in baskets for clean clothes to wear, but the clothes are clean, the dishes get done (mostly), and our floors are clear in the middles where people need to walk. All of this stuff is the work of parenting. It is the moments when I fit grocery shopping and laundry in between the business email and shipping. These things are done with out expectation of accolades, and certainly not because I expect my kids to remember it. The outings (which I’ve been feeling guilty for not doing) are the times that get the photographs and are chronicled as family stories. The true work of parenting is listening when a child wants to tell every detail of her dream. The dream itself is unimportant, but the listening is very important.

The heart of creation, whether it be a family, a story, a business, or a household, is in the quiet work done almost out of sight. When I readjust my vision to focus on those things, I think I may not be doing so badly this summer after all.

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Summer Scenes

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“Oh no! They paved the street.” Gleek was genuinely distressed to see the smooth black surface as we exited the house. I was surprised that this was a surprise to her, because the fact of street paving had required my attention for much of the week, including a grocery trip “so we won’t have to go out tomorrow” and then having to sneak out of the cul de sac just before the paving crews arrived because of another urgent errand. I put up with it all because I viewed new pavement as a good thing. Our cul de sac had become a web of cracks sealed with tar. What I did not know was the long and elaborate games that Gleek had around those tarred over cracks. The cracks had personalities and they played a role in her imaginative worlds. Only now all the cracks were invisible.
“I feel like my friends are suffocating.” Gleek said. “Why do things have to change? I don’t want things to change.” I put my arm around her shoulder and we walked past the still-warm tarry street to where my car was parked. I don’t think Gleek was just lamenting her cracks. This summer she is twelve, play has changed. In a few weeks she’ll be in junior high, that is change too. Kiki will be heading off to college, that is different. Gleek shed tears for all the changes, though she only thought she cried over pavement.

It has been several days since Gleek cried over the street. She’s noted that the texture of the cracks can still be seen now that the new layer has settled in. Her friends are changed, not gone. Hopefully that bodes well for the other things.

“This has been the worst summer of my life.” Link said. I’m not surprised at the declaration. Our schedule has been very sparse on fun outings, and his schedule has been heavy with requirements and doctor’s appointments. Add to that the fact that Link feels some separation from his friends. He’s struggling to find new ways to relate because many of the things which interest his friends do not interest him. One part of me thinks I should attempt to help solve these problems, that I should direct, nudge, encourage. Another part of me recognizes that ultimately Link is the one who has to learn and grow. I can’t give that to him as a gift. Mostly what I can do is make sure that the next four weeks have some happy things for him.

Part way through church I leaned over and put my head on Kiki’s shoulder for just a moment. I could do that because Kiki has graduated from the youth programs and now sits with me during the adult classes. She looked at me puzzled. I whispered to her,
“I just counted weeks in my head. There are four.” In four weeks she’ll be off to her next adventure and I’m glad for her to go, but she’ll be missed here.

“Patch went in the dunk tank!” Kiki told me with impressed tones. Indeed he did, as evidenced by his completely drenched grin. His clothes stuck close to is lanky frame, emphasizing how much taller he has gotten this summer. “It was scary, Mom, but I’m glad that I did it.” Patch said before he proceeded to tell me in detail every moment of his dunk tank experience. He walked tall on the way home, quite pleased with his bravery. Gleek braved the tank as well and felt similarly pleased. We’ve never had a dunk tank as part of a church party before, but this one was a huge success.

We bought a veggie tray late Saturday night and put it out first thing Sunday morning. It was an experiment in psychology and healthy eating. If healthy snacks were convenient, would we eat them instead of rummaging the cupboards for chips? By Sunday evening the tray was three quarters depleted, so the answer appears to be, yes. It is only a beginning. Hopefully it is a beginning that we will follow through on, because this summer the meals have been exceedingly haphazard. Getting up and going to bed have been pretty random as well. Half the time the kids are out of bed before I am and they’re on the computers already. At least we’re making token efforts toward pulling these aspects of our family life back together. Bedtimes and meals, they’re good for us. Really.

“Mom, will you play Minecraft with me?” I haven’t played video games in years. Well, except for Plants vs. Zombies, but that’s a little game on my computer. I used to play video games quite a lot back when our console was a Nintendo 64. The kids did not have the skills to play through difficult sections, and they wanted to see the whole Zelda story, so I played for them. It was a thing I could do to entertain the kids. Then somehow they took the controllers and didn’t need me anymore. I had other things to do, so I did those instead. Occasionally I became interested in a game that had a story, but it was always the story which interested me, not holding the controller, so I was happy to be the one to watch. Minecraft is the latest craze with my kids. They love it. I’m fine with it, but I never watch because it is a sandbox game. No story, just the ability to go anywhere and build anything. I wasn’t interested. But then Gleek looked at me with big eyes. She loves this game and she wanted to do something with me. This is how I came to spend two hours of my Sunday afternoon digging a big square hole in the ground and being generally clueless about things like torches, axes, and red rock. Gleek had a great time zipping around me, making sure I didn’t fall into holes or get lost. Sometimes I need to join them in their activities rather than pulling them out to do something I dictate.

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Updates on Progress and Other Things

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I am tentatively, and with fear of jinxing, declaring my desktop computer to be fixed. We replaced the motherboard almost two weeks ago and it has not crashed since then.

There are only 35 more coin orders to ship. They are all orders where the person who purchased the coins has not given me an address.

Pre-orders for The Body Politic have been progressing well. We’re almost two weeks in and almost sold out of sketch editions. The books were delivered yesterday and my garage smells like triumph. (Triumph is the smell of 5000 freshly printed books.)

Gleek was laid flat by a migraine today, the second she’s had in the past couple of weeks. Sadly this is likely a gift from my genes. I had periodic migraines for about a year when I was her age. I’m taking it as a sign that we need to pay more attention to healthy eating. Not that I think that will solve the problem, but it is a generally good idea.

I’ve finished up the edits on the Tub of Happiness reprint. There were over a hundred corrections to evaluate and apply. I’ve handed half a dozen image edits to Howard. Once those are done, I can upload files to the printer and call it done.

I got copies of the Jay Wake book back. I’m not entirely pleased with the print on demand cover, but the contents are exactly the way I intended. In a week I will get to deliver these copies and then work will begin on the final iteration.

Travel to the Cascade Writer’s Conference and Jay Wake has been arranged. I’m looking forward to attending a writer event and to supporting the efforts of those creating Jay Wake.

Monday will be my day for shipping things to GenCon. We need to send coins, hats, mugs, and The Body Politic. Also on the preparing for GenCon task list: Banners and flyers.

There is also a preparing for WorldCon task list. Howard has acquired new boots and the new tux will be showing up soonish. I still need to buy Howard’s plane tickets. There is math to do in order to figure out how much capitol we can spend on this event. I also need to do the math “guess how much product to send” dance. At least we’ve arranged for transportation of merchandise.

Salt Lake City ComicCon is in September. I keep forgetting about it because it is a newer addition to the schedule. I should make a list for this.

The Unofficial Anecdotal History of Challenge Coins has done some basic collection, but we haven’t yet begun significant editorial work. Once Howard and I hammer out a process, I expect it to go fairly quickly.

We need a new dentist because I don’t trust either of the two we’ve worked with in the past month. Kiki’s wisdom teeth should probably come out before she heads off to college.

My new car still does not have a name. I’ve been noodling and trying to find one that fits. I’m not sure that I’m going to though. The closest I’ve come is realizing that this new car functions as our family’s sky bison, the friendly white thing that is willing to haul all of our people and our stuff, but it can’t be Appa and none of the other sky bison have names.

Howard has been writing prose regularly and making significant progress through his writing commitments. I’m happy about this. I’m working on writing as well.

My intended push toward healthier eating did not materialize in June. I’m going to have to expend some effort and do meal planning. Because it is time for us to be cooking more, eating healthier, and eating out less. Better for our budget and us.

Tonight I cooked a meal using thyme grown in my back garden. I’m quite happy about that.

Link’s doctor has said that no more follow up appointments are necessary. We just need to continue the home treatments we’ve been applying and everything should clear up.

I finally convinced Patch to let me trim the hair around his ears and neck. He looks less scraggly now.

And it has gotten late enough that I can’t remember the other things I intended to post updates about. Time to sleep.

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My Summer

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“So how is your summer going?” my neighbor asked as we sat on my front porch. She’s not a neighbor I visit with often, just about once a month when she comes over as my visiting teacher. It is one of the programs of my church where women of the congregation are assigned to visit each other. It is a good program, helping people make connections and build friendships where they otherwise might not. Like me and this neighbor. We’ve known each other for years, but not had much cause to sit down and just chat. This does leave me with a bit of a dilemma though, because to really clarify how my summer has been would require quite a lot of back story. I could spend hours explaining how our business goes, the various ailments and recoveries of my children, the transitions we have paused for the month of July, and dozens of other things big and small which all contribute to how I feel about my summer on this particular sunny afternoon.

I give all of that a wide miss and simply answer, “Good.” It is truth. Things are good, particularly on that porch with the air warm around me, but the sun veiled by the shade of a tree. I can look across the mowed lawn with it’s clumps of clipped grass that really ought to be raked, but it was so much effort to get my son to mow that I chose not to spend effort arguing about raking as well. There are also weeds aplenty in sight, but I look up instead to the pink blossoms of the mimosa tree. I can smell them as the breeze wafts toward me. Wasps fly languidly in the tall grass and my cat is stretched out on the warm pavement in the shade. On that hot porch I can immerse myself in the feel of a summer afternoon when nothing is particularly pressing. My to do list has been steadily shrinking. This surprises me because for so long things accumulated far faster than I could get them done. Now they are starting to be done.

The coins are shipped. The Body Politic has arrived en-masse. Link’s doctor says he does not need any more follow up appointments. Kiki has been to her orientation meeting. There are still business things to do, but it is a reasonable number, one that allows for me to sit on my front porch and visit with a neighbor. Of course she wants more detail than “Good.” So I try to focus down a little bit more on one small piece of life. Somehow life is easier to share in pieces. Since Kiki is on the porch with us, we end up talking about her orientation and her impending departure for college. It is a comprehensible challenge, easy to define and explain. Much simpler than talking about my writing, or my worries about the coming school year these things are complex and I feel many contradictory things in relation to them. It is nice to focus on an aspect of life rather than trying to hold all of it in my head at once, as I so often do.

Perhaps this is why I feel so calm during summer afternoons when I step outside. In those moments I let myself be fully present in that moment rather than on a computer with half a dozen windows open, trying to remember which thing should come next. I don’t have such a respite in the winter months and I miss it. My neighbor stayed only for a short visit before getting on her bike and pedaling home. I sat for a few minutes after she left, just feeling the fading heat of the day and knowing that this summer is good.

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Five More Weeks of Summer

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It was mid-afternoon yesterday when the trucking company called and fractured my attention for the rest of the day. Four pallets of books, 5000 copies, will be arriving at my house tomorrow afternoon. We have suddenly shifted into book shipping season and I wasn’t expecting to hit that until the middle of next week. Early is good though. It means I can ship books to GenCon with a comfortable margin to spare. It means that Howard has more time to get the sketching done. Yet there is this list of things I wanted to complete before the books arrived and now I’ll be running things in parallel, which is more normal than not, but I keep dreaming of finishing tasks before starting other tasks.

We’ve entered the middle of summer muddle. This is when Howard and I look at the shamble of our schedule and have a conversation about how we really should be getting up before 9 am and also perhaps regular meals would be better for the children than letting them forage through the cupboards. I’m not yet to the point where I look forward to having school as a provider of schedule in our lives. I may never reach that point this summer because the onset of school brings with it challenges that sound exhausting. However I do wish that our days had more structure without me having to be the one to create and maintain it. I’m far too prone to letting the structure go wibbly wobbly.

It does feel like the arrival of the books this afternoon will tip us over into the approach to summer’s end. We have five weeks and that time begins to feel short for all the things we have to do. For Kiki it feels quite long she’s ready to begin her college adventures now. Among the things I’d like to do in the next five weeks are some of those summer activities, like swimming, that we’ve yet to do. Sometimes I feel vaguely guilty about that, because summer is when families go on trips and see relatives. Instead we’ve mostly stayed home. I’ve got five weeks. I should do something more with them.

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Prayers for the Coming School Year

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It is too early to be thinking about the coming school year. Yet taking Kiki to her college orientation filled my head with concerns and fervent prayers for what is coming.

May my college bound Kiki quickly adapt to her new habitat, let her find friends who are enough like her that she feels comfortable, and enough different that her horizons broaden. Let her learn her own limits and discover she is stronger than she expects. Let her miss home enough to call once in a while, but not so much that she can’t embrace the newness that college has to offer.

May high school bound Link learn how to navigate a new social environment which involves hanging out with girls and listening to what they have to say. Let him find friends and places where he feels fully himself, even if he is surprised to discover that he is different than he thought he was. Let him find ways to be kind and of service to others because that always makes him happier.

May junior high Gleek be stressed enough to bring out some of her anxiety so that we can help her learn strategies to manage it, but help her not be so stressed that those anxieties overwhelm her. Let her find friendships in unexpected places, but avoid the notice of insecure peers who are seeking targets. May she use her strength to defend others and help her school be a friendlier place.

May Patch learn to manage elementary school without an older sibling there as security. Let him find his own inner strength and self confidence. Help him know that making mistakes is not the end of anything and learn to change his plans when the world does not go as he expects.

May all of us here at home adapt to having Kiki gone, with the younger kids stepping up and learning new responsibility. Yet let us always be ready to make space for her to return.

Change is coming, there is no way for us to adapt to in in advance, so may we rest this summer and adapt quickly when the time comes.

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Writing Thoughts

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My friends write books. They do this a lot. I watch them write. Not in person, that would be kind of creepy, but via their social media posts or when we get together then we talk about the book they are writing and how it is going. It is rarely the same book. My opening question is not “how is your book going?” but “which book are you working on now?” Because each friend writes books, plural. More than one book. They live in plot and story. I watch them mid conversation, when we’re talking about something else and just for a moment their brain shutters over, and I know that my friend has had a writing thought and filed it away for later. I’ve had that experience, had a story live in my brain and snatch bits and pieces of my day to be part of it. I’ve written more than one story. What I have failed to do is sit down and write regularly.

I’m quite able to point at my life and say, “but look how busy I was.” I will be telling the truth, no one will argue that I live my life in an insanely busy way. I keep trying to slow down and not doing that either. The thing is my writer friends are also busy, but they write fiction anyway. Lately I have been watching them more, as if that would help me figure out how it is done, but watching won’t reveal a secret. There isn’t one. People who write books, plural, are people who choose to sit down and write instead of sitting down and doing something else.

Then I have to ask myself the question, how important is it that I write? Because the world is full of things I can do. Some of them may be better uses of my time than writing fiction. What does my fiction matter when weighed on a scale of all the things I could have done with the hours I’m allotted daily? Sometimes our lives are measurably better if I spend time on laundry instead of typing. Yet the regular processing of laundry from dirty to clean does not feel like adding something of import to the universe, it is merely the front lines of beating back entropy. When I ponder the worth of my writing, knowing other writers hampers me some, because I know the hard stories. I know about the beloved books that did not sell. I know about the months, weeks, and years spent waiting for some kind of response from the glacially slow publishing process. In social media it is word counts, interviews, and book releases. Behind the scenes are two years of work put into a book that will never see print. I have one of those books. It reminds me that work does not always equal success. So I can’t dive into the work of writing with a rosy eyed dream that as soon as I’m done my book will be packaged and put into the hands of readers.

I sometimes envy writers who are able to dream. One of my friends said that she’s not sure she could write a book without believing it will be published. I wonder if that is why I have not been writing. Things have calmed down. July has gifted me with enough time to write and I have not been using that time for writing. I am sadly jaded before my first novel is even written. It makes turning away very attractive. There are so many things I could do. Good things. I should spend more time with the kids. I should organize the house. I should reconnect with my friends and communities. I should pull the weeds from my flowerbeds. I should look around and see who needs help. In comparison, writing feels selfish, a thing I do that takes me away from all of the other things rather than something that connects me to others. And that is sad, because the point of story is to travel between people. My finished stories don’t go very far. Ah, but there I’ve spotted a lie in my brain. Hold Onto Your Horses keeps filtering outward, making friends, bringing happiness. It is the reminder that sometimes a book doesn’t make a big splash, but it keeps going and existing for a very long time. I think of that and I find a little pocket of hope because I love my novel Amelia and her eponymous protagonist. I would love for her to go out in the world and make friends. I’m not sure I can believe in publishing success for me, but I can hope for it for her. Which is a weird mental trick, but I suppose if it lets me finish writing the book, I’ll take it.

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I Found Time to Garden

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The casual passerby out for a walk would not look at my flower beds and intuit that I am a person who enjoys weeding. Surely a person who enjoys pulling weeds would not let crab grass grow waist high until the flowering plants are nearly choked to death. Yet I do. The trouble is that I forget that weeding is an activity which makes me happy. I wait for the right conjunction of weather, available time, and energy instead of arranging so that those things will overlap.

This evening I rescued my baby butterfly bush from the grass. I am quite happy to see that it has not died. I planted it last fall, but I feared that the cold winter had killed it and then I worried that neglect would do the same. But now it stands in a space of bare earth, putting forth its first flowers. Perhaps next week I’ll be able to rescue the peonies and day lilies. In late August I hope to begin putting new plants into the ground. For once I would like to end the gardening season with the weeds in retreat. I hope for that most years, but perhaps this is the year that I will succeed. If I can just get the plants into the ground, then some of them will thrive despite my neglect. I like that about plants.

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