In Which an 11 Year Old Boy Discovers that a “Girl Book” Can Be Really Good

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Me: “Hey Patch, for your reading assignment you need to read a Newbery award book. I think you should read this one.”

Patch: “What’s it called?” he asked turning it over. Then he saw the title, The Princess Academy and paused.

Me: “I know has princess in the title, but I really think you’ll like it.”

Patch: “Okay” sounding doubtful.

Later that evening.

Patch: “I think this should be a read at home book, because I don’t want it to get lost at school.”

Me: “Are you a little embarrassed to take a princess book to school?”

Patch: Long explanation of why he needs to leave the book at home, uses supporting evidence, even though he intends to take a different book to school.

Me: “Also, you’re a little embarrassed to take a princess book to school.”

Patch: Sheepish half-smile. “Yeah.”

Me: “I understand. I don’t really think there are girl books and boy books, just stories. But some people do think that way and I understand if you are worried about getting teased.”

Patch: Nods and begins reading.

The first day, he stuck to his plan. The other book went to school. On the second day, Patch went to his back pack and pulled out the other book.

Patch: Holding up The Princess Academy, “I’m taking this one. It’s really good.”

When I picked him up from school that day he walked slowly to the car because he was reading as he walked. In the car he spun theories about what would happen next and how the mountain folk really should be rich because of all the Linder.

Thus do I begin to teach my son that good stories reside in all sorts of covers. I also begin to teach him that he can identify with a female protagonist and be just as enthralled by her story as by stories which feature boys. And if my son can identify with fictional girls then he can empathize with real life ones. Book by book the world can become a better place.

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Pondering the weeks to come

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I run my fingers across the calendar squares, counting the days. Twelve more mornings when I have to shepherd the kids off to school. Seventeen days until I reach that final school morning. I try not to count. I want to dwell in the days I have rather than living in expectation of something else, but it is hard. I know that change is coming. I know what I need to do for it, but I can’t know exactly how it will all work until it arrives. So I wait.

I’m not idle while I wait. Each day is filled with a full slate of things to do. Some of them I spend focused on a single large project. More often the day is fractured and pieces spread out over multiple projects. Sometimes it is my task list that reminds me to jump from one thing to another. Other times one task flows logically into the next, as when my work on the challenge coin pdf reminded me that I intended to design a “minion coin” to give out to those people who have helped me with shipping events. Learning the traditions as made me want to participate in them more.

This morning I had the following conversation with Howard over twitter.

Me: May is always a month of many things.
Howard: Name a month that is not, at least for us, a Month of Many Things. Go ahead. TRY.
Me: I think June of 2005 was pretty empty.

Of course I’m only guessing about June 2005. I just know that it fell after Howard quit Novell and before we printed our first book. I was spending my time making the pennies last by shopping garage sales. So I guess I was still busy, just differently busy.

Looking ahead, the calendar for June, July, and August appear emptier. There are fewer appointments, but just as many things to accomplish.

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Cleaning House and Getting Organized

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Most days I look around my house and wish that I had time to clean it. Then every once in awhile I have a day where I get started on a small cleaning task, which leads to another small task, which leads to another until I find myself vacuuming in a fully cleaned room. I love those days because the next several days after are so much nicer. Today the impetus to clean was the fact that we had company coming, quite a lot of company, many of whom were small children. I figured I should probably pick up the dice and Lego off the floor lest the toddler eat them. Fortunately my kids also saw the need for cleaning and they pitched in to help. I like my house a lot better this evening than I did this morning.

Kiki has been home for more than a week. She’s fully settled into the basement room. She started work as a Tayler Corporation employee last Monday. I can already see the difference in how much I’m getting done. Having an auxiliary brain with attached hands makes my life so much more pleasant. This will be particularly true as we head into book shipping season. It is coming right up. I got an email today which said that the books might arrive as early as next week. That is a week sooner than anticipated. I’ve learned that sometimes there are hold-ups in the port which delay shipments, so I don’t count the delivery as settled until I get a scheduling call from the local trucking company. But pre-orders open one week from today.

Having Kiki work for me has made other things possible as well. In June I’ll be headed out for a two week family reunion trip to California. During most of the time that I am gone, Kiki will be minding the store. Literally. I’m training her to do all of the shipping work that I do. This means I won’t return to a pile of urgent customer support. I can tell already that I’m going to miss Kiki when she leaves for school again in August. But I’ll be much better positioned to know what I need in an assistant. And everything will be far more organized than it has been in quite a long time

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Digging out Weeds

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This was my front flower bed at 9am this morning. Grass has always been a challenge in this bed. I’ve fought with it for years, never quite able to eradicate it because I was reluctant to really dig up the bed for fear of hurting hidden spring bulbs. Then I had two or three summers where I did very little gardening. The grass began to win and this year there were no spring blooms. I decided it was time to take a shovel and dig everything up. When I began digging, my hope was to dig it out and buy some flowers to plant to make things pretty. Within a few minutes I could tell that the grass was so pervasive and wide-spread that the only chance I had to really get rid of it is if I employ a bare earth policy. I need to dig up this bed every few weeks all summer long to be able to find all the hidden grass and morning glory roots.

Step one is mostly complete.

You can see that I left the peonies, a couple of day lilies and some flax down at the end near the rock. These are good strong perennials and they are the basis for the flower bed that this will become. For this year they’ll just sit there surrounded by dirt. If I succeed in my war of attrition on the grass, then when cool weather arrives in the fall, I will plant some more perennials. I have all summer to think about which ones I want.

As I was digging, I thought about this bare earth approach in other areas of my life. There is often a stage in creating something beautiful that is downright ugly and a whole lot of work. Last year was a bare earth year for our family as we cleared away lots of mess and reconfigured some relationships. This year the kids are poised to bloom. Right now my novel is in a bare earth phase. I’m just working and it feels like there is no way that it can ever be a thing of beauty. But sometimes it takes a summer of digging weeds before there can be a summer of flowers.

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Pieces of Posts

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Earlier today I made a joke on Twitter about how pieces of four blog posts were all fighting in my brain. Then I sat down with a pen and paper to discover that it was at least seven posts. None of them have a chance to be full blog posts unless I get them sorted out a bit. So I’m going to throw the pieces here either to live as little fragments, or perhaps to be rescued and turned into full posts later. Either way, they’ll be out of my head. It was getting noisy in there.

1. While I was out walking yesterday in Salt Lake City with Mary Robinette Kowal who has professional theater training, we were stopped by a man with a very sad story. Within two sentences I recognized the classic Stranger in Distress scam. He picked up pretty quickly that we weren’t buying it and the moment he did, he dropped the act and walked away. At which Mary said “and I applaud that performance.” Later she critiqued the things he was doing wrong in trying to engage sympathy and explained how it could be done much better. Let me say that I hope that Mary never turns scam artist. She’d walk off with all the money.

2. I was in Salt Lake to attend Mary’s reading and to visit with her. So I wore my casual clothes instead of professional appearance gear. So I was taken by surprise to be recognized and to have to introduce myself as an author after the signing. Note: I should have been more prepared for it in that context. It brought to my attention how I have very different modes of approaching the world when I expect to be invisible and when I expect to be putting myself forward.

3. One of the places that Mary and I went was Decades Vintage Clothing where we looked at all the lovely clothes. I love that store. With current budget and time limitations I couldn’t buy myself any clothes, not even for projects. However I did notice a bin of handkerchiefs. One of them was so lovely (Hand embroidered!) that I realized it needs to be in the book I’m writing. So I bought it using the spare change in my purse and brought it home.

4. We’re in the midst of pre-order preparations. Mostly this means that Howard has to blog to let people know when ordering opens. I took some of the iconic art from the book and put it up on eBay for sale. Howard is also going to do some guest posts and other publicity related things. This marketing is important, but it also means the beginning of the pre-order anxieties. Illogical or not, we’re always afraid that THIS pre-order will be the time when no one shows up to buy the book. We’ll throw a party and no one will show. We try very hard not to play the “What if” game, but until we see how the ordering goes, there is a big question mark in the middle of our financial plans for the next six months. I don’t like staring at big question marks.

5. Kiki has been on the job as a Tayler Corporation employee for a week now. We’re still figuring it out. I’ve learned that I have to do a better job of giving her predictable work hours. I’m also still training her on what needs to be done and how to do it. Yet I can see already how much better my life is going to be with help. Kiki did the matting for the eBay art. She’s going to take over most of the routine shipping. She’s helping me organize and plan ahead in ways that I just haven’t had time to do before. I think I’m going to miss her help very much when she goes back to college in August.

6. I’ve moved my accounting day from Monday to Friday. Surprising how a small change can make everything fit better.

7. There are fourteen school days left in the year. I am so ready to stop tracking school assignments. In fact, I kind of did for about a week there, but now I’m trying to be good again. The switch into all the kids being home all day brings its own challenges, but I’m about ready for it anyway.

8. One of the things I did during my day in Salt Lake City was sit down and write words for House in the Hollow. It was really hard to get started again. The whole thing feels a little stupid, which is a normal stage for the muddle in the middle of a book. So to paraphrase Chuck Wendig; this is my beach storming draft. Get out of the water. Establish a beach head on the sand. Don’t Die. Hopefully I’ll find the flow of it again.

9. Howard and Kiki have conspired to hire her for Tayler Corporation artwork. I’m excited at the project. It is going to be fun.

… and I think that’s it. Surely nine posts is more than enough to make one head feel very crowded indeed.

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Walking in the City

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I walked in Salt Lake City today. I’ve walked here before, but mostly in the central downtown sections. Really I’d only ever been on foot within a few blocks: convention hotel to Salt Palace, Temple Square to City Creek Center, and Jaunts to the Blue Iguana restaurant or to the Gateway mall. I’ve really seen very little of this city. Today I walked along 200 north for about eight blocks. I was (again) traveling to the Blue Iguana restaurant, but my starting location was a quaint little neighborhood. I passed an art store I wanted to peruse, an antiques store which I really must return to, a recital hall with music painted on the outside, and a violin maker’s school where I could look in the window and see rows of students carefully crafting musical instruments. I did not feel comfortable taking pictures of the students as they worked, but on the return walk class was over.

I find I have a greater interest in the crafting of these instruments since my son has begun playing cello. We even checked a book out of the library called Music in the Wood which showed a step-by-step process of making a cello. I never expected to find such craftsmanship on my walk to lunch.

Cities are full of odd corners and little surprises. I never really understood that before. I took this little walk and saw all of these interesting buildings in such a short span of strides. It almost made me want to take up residence in a city where walking and public transit would be my primary modes of travel. Instead I’ll remain where I’m firmly rooted in my suburban neighborhood. Deep roots in a community are not to be pulled up lightly, but it would do me good to go adventuring in other places more often. Salt Lake City is not that far and it obviously has lots to explore.

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Despite it all Life is Good

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It feels like the kids and Howard are always extra rambunctious or grouchy on the days when I am tired. Those are the days where I drive up to my house and see the scattered pieces of some broken plastic toy across the pavement in front of our house. Then I remember that Gleek and some neighborhood kids had made a game of smashing the thing and they’d wandered off leaving the pieces. Of course they didn’t clean it up. Cleaning up rarely occurs to children and only sometimes to teens. Cleaning up becomes automatic for people who’ve been in charge of cleaning up long enough to know that life is better if the work is done first. The garbage cans were out by the curb too, waiting for me to bring them in. I looked at these small tasks, only a couple of minutes each, and realized that it fell to me, not to do the tasks, but to make someone else do them. The tiring part is that making someone else do them takes longer than doing them. It takes more energy too, but I simply can’t do all the tasks all the time. I have to make sure that others do them enough that they learn the “clean up the messes” impulse that they’ll need for the rest of their lives.

The house is a wreck, of course. I have been busy over the last month. We had vacation, then a major convention, then the Strength of Wild Horses shipping, then fetching Kiki from college. I haven’t had time to do things nor to make others do them. So I haul the kids from their games and require them to carry in the groceries that I fetched from the store. Then they eat the dinner I provided by spending $5 at Sam’s club for a rotisserie chicken. Not exactly home cooked, but more suited to our newly frugal budget than ordering pizza. The budget is new too. I remember how it goes from the years when we first launched into cartooning full time. But the habits are rusty and I’m still figuring out how they fit with the newer configuration of our lives. Back then I had time to bargain hunt for the cheapest whole chicken available and then to roast it myself. I work differently now and my solutions must be different.

Howard is having a rough day. He alerted me to the fact via text while I was still at the store. I look around the chaos of the kitchen, dirty dishes everywhere, kids wandering around and squabbling while they serve themselves food. I try to gently correct the rudest interactions and remind them that they can speak kindly to each other and still get the outcomes that they want. The kids listen. Maybe it will take this time. Probably not, but it is like making them clean. I have to keep modeling and reminding so that they can practice the empathy for others that they’ll need their whole lives. The chaos in the kitchen is perfectly calibrated to punch all of Howards anxiety and stress buttons. I am not surprised when he disappears back to his office, it is good of him, because he chose the kinder and more empathetic disappearance rather than venting his stress out loud. I am sad that he’s having a rough day, not just for him, but for me. When I’m tired and he’s happy, then I’m not so tired. That’s the truth of hard days. It is not that my family saves up chaos and grouchiness for the days when I’m tired, it is because I’m tired that everything feels extra grouchy and chaotic. Even things that would normally be fine.

I load the dishwasher, because that makes the kitchen better. The kids eat and are re-directed toward their evening homework activities. In the wake of all that, there is some quiet and some order. I sit facing the cleared counters, my back to the rest of the house. I’ll deal with the rest tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have a full night’s sleep instead of the insomnia I had last night. Tomorrow I will do the laundry and vacuum, or make one of the kids do those things. For now, I will rest as much as I can. And I will remember how very fortunate I am to have all of these things which sometimes make life feel chaotic.

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Strength of Wild Horses Available Now

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There it is. The Strength of Wild Horses made into a book. I wrote it. Angela illustrated it. Three hundred people backed the Kickstarter project that funded the printing. The books arrived. I sent rewards to Kickstarter backers. And now the book is available. You can buy it in our store by clicking that link or on the picture above. Or on Amazon.com


Don’t the books look pretty together? They match.

It has been a long road getting to this point, but here it is. Excuse me while I go happy dance for a bit.

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Taming the Garden

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Somewhere in the years, Mother’s Day became and emotionally complicated holiday. It didn’t used to be. I try not to make it so now, but sometimes it is because my children and husband want to do something nice for me and I want to let them, but I don’t want them to feel obligated. Sometimes it slides by without a ripple and all is happy. Other years it is a fraught day with emotions other than happiness and contentment, even though all of the scripts state that Mother’s Day is supposed to be a day when Mom is happy. This year I saw the holiday coming. I also know that money is tight and so the last thing that would feel happy is extra expense. I sat everyone down yesterday and declared that what I really want for Mother’s Day is for our yard to not be an absolute wreck. I was surprised at how willing the kids were to go along with this plan. I think they liked having a clear goal.

This morning the work began with clipping and clearing. We broke out the mower for the first time and trimmed back various bushes and vines. The pom pom spruce got sheared back. We stared at the apricot tree and the pear tree, but both have gotten so tall that we’re going to need some sort of a pole saw to give them the trimming that they need. Four hours of work across five people and we’ve cleared away a significant mess. This evening some of the dry branches will have a second use as fuel for our fire pit. There will be smores. Next week will all be hands and knees work. We’ll need to get down into the flower beds and pull out all the extra grass. I want to clear the dirt enough that I can sprinkle seeds. I’d love to plant flowers that will bloom this year, but I don’t have the funds for that. I can do seeds though. I have a big stock of them that have accumulated over the years.

At one moment during the morning I stood and watched my kids at work. They were all focused on their tasks at hand, which is not at all how family work days used to go. They functioned as a crew and got lots of work done. Then afterward they did more things together. I have to remember that we play together more happily when we’ve worked together first.

It would be so lovely to spend this summer glad every time I step outside my door instead of sad and guilty. That would be a lovely gift indeed.

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Drifting Day

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I finished the Strength of Wild Horses shipping except for a few odds and ends. I expected to spend today clearing those away and preparing for Kiki to come home tomorrow. Instead my brain declared a jellyfish day and I’ve accomplished very little. Or rather, I’ve done some important things, but not in any sort of a focused way. That four hour nap was crucial to my ability to drive safely tomorrow. So I meandered my way through the day, getting the most important things done. Everything else will sit until Friday.

It turns out that after a sufficient period of focused drive, my brain just stops and I drift for a bit. If I embrace the drift and let it happen, then I can get moving again on a different day. Excuse me, there’s a hammock there outside my window and it needs someone to sit in it for awhile.

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