Saturday, December 5, 2009

Life, Sunshine, and the common edit


Having gotten plenty of sleep, if by plenty you mean broken by waking every hour on the hour for more than eight hours, I am cheerily at the computer again for a day of second round edits on Odd Stuff.

*Ahem*

My boys woke up in the middle of the night ill. Projectile ill. Clean my carpets ill. Because why on earth would they have made it to the bathroom ill.

Then at about three am, Justice, in ever infinite wisdom, thought it would be a darn good time to write a letter to Santa. And turn on all the lights. And then tell me about the letter to Santa.

At three am.

I yelled at her to go back to bed and what on earth was she THINKING.

She said she had time to do it.

She also had time to be asleep.

By the time she went back down, another son was waking to make an unsuccessful dash for the bathroom.

I finally gave up on the whole sleep idea at eight and was thrilled that I had already given up my hours at work today due to a childcare conflict. So, I did not have to work or call off work.

Grr.

That was my overwhelming happiness. Can you hear the cheer?

It is not swine flu. No one has fevers. Still dodging that bullet.

Speaking of Bullet, Laurell K. Hamilton has started writing Bullet and Divine Misdemeanors is coming out on the 8th *happy dance* which is also my friend Michelle's birthday. So for her birthday, I am going to buy myself the book. *shrugs* Okay, makes sense to me.

Other author news, Robin McKinley is still working on Pegasus.

I love her. Love. Not like hearts and flowers. Like her writing is beautiful and thought provoking and funny and she just freaking ROCKS. When I grow up I would love to be like Robin. Or like me, but with Robin's attitude. That would work. I would hate the world to miss out on me. I am so darned cool.

Aside from the Damar series, consisting so far of The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword (to which my first book crushes as a kid probably really evolved. I mean, I really liked Colin from Secret Garden... but that was puppy love. My first real literary crush was Luthe. Then I met Corlath. I discovered I could love two men. Ah.) she also wrote Outlaws of Sherwood. This retelling of the Robin Hood story not only won me the Kent State Impromptu Writing Contest (I wrote about Cecily and Big John as I had the biggest crush on Big John... not Robin. I know. Secondary character... but I identified with Cecily not Marian. *shrugs* I am not Lady... I am Lady who runs away, hacks off her hair and pretends to be a boy. That was way more where I was at the time.) and won her a boat load of awards, it also cemented my childhood and adulthood love of McKinley.

I then, as a grown up who can pick and choose what she reads and has this handy piece of plastic that allows me to buy books that aren't at my library, searched out the remaining works of McKinley and found she had never written a dull word in her life. She retold Beauty and the Beast twice in two very different ways. I must say, I prefer Spindles End. Then again, still the tomboy, not the lady.

As time went by, I had read them all. And it seemed that she wasn't writing.

Then one day, in a bookstore I looked for her as I always did. There, amongst the McCafferty, was McKinley.

And there was a title I had never seen. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. Mind you, it was already a given I would buy the book. When I flipped the jacket in trembling eagerness to see what she had written about and found vampires...

*Giddy dance*

Robin spun vamps in a way that I had not read yet. Of course! Constantine, her name for her vampire, was nothing like Lestat, Jean Claude, Tristan... he was not like Nosferatu. He was a McKinley version. I mean, he drank blood but from there she took it a new direction.

And again, I fell madly in love with a McKinley character. That is her gift. Other authors give grand details. The slide of flesh on flesh. The scent of a body moving against you. The taste of salt on your lovers lips. Mind you... not opposed to this as I am a huge fan of those books as well.

The true gift of McKinley, in this reader/authors opinion, is the ability to make you shiver by what she does NOT say. The line, "Then you can look forward to no sleep whatsoever," from Hero and the Crown, made me sigh for years. That was it. And the soup spoon dropped.

She never said more.

She didn't have to.

I love that. I love that somehow, it is enough.

Other author news... Still waiting impatiently for Kim Harrison to move on with the Hallows and 2010 seems like it will be another book. Charlaine Harris is going to give us another tale of Sookie and Eric in 2010. As a reader, this is going to be the best year EVER.

I also am super excited for this new author I found, Saranna DeWylde that I read on this site :

http://www.textnovel.com/stories_list_detail.php?story_id=950

She has a book coming out with SBP and I am excited to read it since reading How to Lose a Demon in Ten Days. Okay, should have been editing. Busman's holiday...

Other than that, just excited about my own series really. What are you reading?

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