Lisa Hendrix

Ah, the joys of summer. Lazy days, hammocks under the maple tree,  corn on the cob, poison ivy…

Wait. I live in southern Oregon. We have poison oak, not poison ivy. Everyone knows that. Well, everyone except the bird that apparently flew in with a gut full of poison ivy seeds and planted them in the pachysandra.

A while back, I noticed we had some new plant growing in the front side yard, between the mulberry and the cherry. It was pretty and green, and other than a vague idea that I needed to figure out what it was, I didn’t think much of it at the time. Then I got that debilitating crick in my neck I mentioned and wasn’t doing much of anything, particularly gardening, so the pretty green plant grew and spread, looking quite lovely in the shade and filling in a bare patch in the ground cover that needed something anyway.

Then my neck got better and I went out to take a closer look. Leaves of three. Oh, crap. The leaves weren’t shiny, like I remember from summers in Kansas, but I knew.  I came in and fired up the laptop just to check.

We’ve got poison ivy, a patch about 10′ x 15′ that bleeds into the pachysandra and the lilies of the valley (also poisonous, btw, but not in quite the same way). I scooted off to buy Tecnu and Marie’s Poison Oak Soap, and then hubby and I geared up for the attack. But the woody root is well buried in the pachysandra and intertwined with those of the mulberry, and it quickly became obvious we were never going to succeed that way. So hubby headed off to the armory (garden store) while I scrubbed the tools with Technu. (Here’s a great site with info on poison ivy, how to recognize it, and what to do about it.)

Thank goodness Steinarr and Marian (IMMORTAL OUTLAW) didn’t have to worry about poison ivy (imagine that scene under the tree at the collier’s camp if they discovered they’d been sitting in the wrong plant!), It’s not native to England,  but unfortunately, modern English practitioners of love al fresco have to look before they lie. The plant is so beautiful in the autumn that some fool brought some in to enhance his garden. Somebody, presumably, immune (about 1 in 4 is, although that can change with continued exposure).

The bird that made us a gift of the seeds was likely a downy woodpecker, who loves the creamy white berries. I’ve seen way more woodpeckers in the neighborhood than usual this year, including one I think was a downy. But it could have been anything, because the only beasts NOT immune to poison ivy are primates — like us. So there you go.

Anyway, chemical warfare has been launched. Leaves are beginning to wilt (not to include the mulberry or cherry, we hope). We’ll still have to grub up the roots this fall while wearing exposure suits, but at least we’ll know they’re dead when we do. And then we’ll have to replant. Something pretty and green…and non-toxic.

We’ve avoided rashes so far, but I bet some of you haven’t.  Care to share your itchy story? Got pix?

Amazon still hasn’t come up with an acceptable explanation for what happened over the weekend.  Or rather, they’ve come up with so many that it’s clear they’re vamping in the hope we’ll forget.  We won’t.

I could go through the whole thing, but others have done it and given better analyses than I could manage, so I’ll send you off to them (please do remember to come back…):

Amazonfail: Post Mortem by Kassia Krozser at Booksquare.

Amazon = Fail by “the angry black woman” at Alas, a Blog

The Amazon Fail by Hugh at The Book Oven.  He also offers a suggestion to publishers that would diffuse some of the big A’s power and  keep a similar decision/error/”glitch” from causing such a significant hit to a particular segment of books. Publishers, are you paying attention?

Go forth, become educated, and understand why monopolies are bad and what you can do to help. While you’re gone, I’ll be working on my links to offer readers choices beyond Bezos.

Amazon has shown its true colors by de-ranking certain types of books. They call them “adult,” but the designation involves a preponderance of gay/lesbian/transexual books amid the erotica. Don’t think that’s so bad?  How about if I tell you that they’re also de-ranking romance novels left and right? How about if I tell you they’ve de-ranked the children’s book Heather has Two Mommies as well as Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain? How about if I tell you that they still happily rank dogfighting books and videos and everything in the Playboy repertoire?  How about if I tell you that Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military was de-ranked and American Psycho was not?

Amazon Rankings don’t really mean anything to customers…but they mean everything to Amazon itself, which uses them to generate things like front page searches, bestseller lists, “If you like x then you’ll like y” recommendations, and everything else that effects the visibility and sales potential of books.  In other words, if your book is de-ranked, it WILL NOT appear on a front page search, even if the reader searches by your name or title. Heaven help you if they search by topic. Here are a couple of more thorough explanations

Dear Author 

Smart Bitches,Trashy Books  (My particular favorite, but as always, be warned if you’re reading at work or have a tendency to swoon at explicit language).

LA Times Book Blog

And for good measure, a here’s a definition of the term  Amazon Rank. (Add this link on your own site and help Google Bomb the term so it comes up #1 on searches. More about this in the Smart Bitches post.)

That’s right. Not $121 million.  Not even $165 million.  $1.2 BILLION, in bonuses and retention payments, a big chunk of it to the very idiots in their Financial Products unit who drove the company into its $175+ billion hole.

According to the Wall Street Journal (via more accessible post at BoingBoing) it breaks down like this:

$121.5 million in incentive bonuses for 2008 (6400 employees)

$450 million bonuses to Financial Product units employees (? employess, but said to be “executives”)

$600 million in retention bonuses (4,000 employees)

TOTAL: $1.2 billion

And of course, the CEO neglected to notify anyone until Saturday that this was going to happen Sunday.

Bonuses. Retention. 

How about PINK SLIPS, you jackasses?  And I not at all respectfully suggest the first one should go to CEO Edward Liddy.

Email to the Board goes to boardofdirectors@aig.com 

Phone calls to 1-877-244-2210.

Let them know just how much you love what they’ve done with your money. Then let your President, both your Senators, and your Representative know how you feel as well.

And spread around that contact info. It’s not about politics. It’s about survival. Ours.

No, not these guys, though I wouldn’t mind meeting Vin Diesel. Or Paul Walker, for that matter…

Remember back in early February (that long ago?) when I said I was starting a Fast Draft* of Immortal Champion, the next book in my paranormal historical romance series.  Well, I didn’t.  I wrote one great day, then flaked out under pressure from things like preparing a conference workshop or three, getting promo set up for IMMORTAL OUTLAW, and judging Rita books.  Meanwhile, my buddy Scott (R. Scott Shanks, Jr.) totally embarrassed me by actually leaping into that hole I had proposed and adding a significant number of words to his draft during his 14 days, even though he works full time.  Good on him. Bad on me.

So here I sit red-faced, still with nothing significant done.  But those conferences are over, the Rita scores are posted, promo is at least temporarily under control, and I have a clear two weeks ahead, so here I go. For the next 14 days, I intend to do 5000 words a day. Possible, I know, because I’ve done it several times, just not back to back. Whether I have anything useful or vaguely resembling a novel at the end of the time remains to be seen.  I’ve never approached a book this way before.  But something has GOT to change in how I get my writing done, and this holds a certain fascination for me, so it’s what I’m trying.

As for this blog — don’t expect a lot (not that I’m one of the most prolific bloggers anway…).  What I’m going to do is leave this post on top and simply update it every day with my daily writing and cumulative total.   That way, all your comments, kind and encouraging or snide and snarky, will be in the same place.  Please remember to pop back in ever now and then even though your RSS feed won’t show any new posts.  And tell all your friends to come watch me–I know me, and an audience will keep me honest and on task.  Tell them they can come watch some crazy woman beating her brains and carpal tunnels out on a MacBook.  I’ll either soar with the eagles and Vin, or crash and burn like one of those guys in the old “early days of human flight” compilations. Either way, it should prove amusing for everyone — except possibly my family.  In fact, to encourage voyeurism, anyone who posts a Comment on this post will be entered to win an Advance Read Copy of IMMORTAL OUTLAW. The drawing will take place on March 25, after I have a brain again.

And when am I starting?

Why, now, of course. 

UPDATES 

3/9, 11pm:   6366 (Makes a net loss for the day, because I broke a rule and edited out 1158 words.  Had to, as I was off to a horrible false start, part of the reason I had trouble getting my brain into this  But now I’m set up and ready to go.)  

3/15, 8:30pm:  Fail.  But not really.  I was doing a quick fact check of something for the next day’s writing and stumbled into one of those serendipitous things.  I’ve been tying in as much myth as possible into the Brotherhood stories, but hadn’t hit the right one for Champion until the other day. I found it, or rather IT, the critical myth. So I’m replotting.  For now, I’ll go back to my regularly unscheduled blogging, but I’ll be back to Fast Draft when I get the new Board done.  Board, you ask?  Yes, board.

———–

* Fast Draft is the name of a workshop by Candace Havens and may or may not be trademarked to her (couldn’t find out on her site).  Either way, I give her full credit for the name, if not the concept of writing really, really fast. Authors have been doing that since some editor  invented the deadline.

Never say never, but really…

On Sunday morning, 17 called and asked if he could have some friends over for a last-minute SuperBowl party.  Now this surprised me, because he’s a theater kid and neither he, nor his girlfriend,  nor his theater friends have ever demonstrated any interest in football.  But we said yes, told him to tell his friends to bring the junk food, and set about tidying up the house to make it presentable,  and then I went to fetch a variety of pop and a couple of bags of ice while my dh started making a big pot of chili.

Shortly after the kids arrived, it was clear they did, indeed, have no interest in football, as they brought a Wii and all its accoutrements. By then, the chili  had been brought up to temp and dumped into the crockpot, and dh asked me to taste it for spices.

I did, and almost barfed. Seems one of the packages of ground meat had gone bad.  Way bad. Ugh. Pot of chili ruined.

Love of my life got rid of the nasty chili while I went into the pantry to dig through the cabinets for ingredients for a new pot (For speed, I used a base of canned chili, jazzed up with fancy beans, Ortegas, etc.)

As the new chili bubbled, I slipped off to the john.  It smelled of chili in there, which I chalked up to my husband dumping the first batch down the toilet.

A bit later, however, hubby went in there and promptly stepped in water—overflow, it turned out, from the shower, which had backed up. Turns out that was the smell I smelled, because hubby, bless his heart, hadn’t flushed the chili, but had run it down the disposal.  The whole 6 quarts of it. Clearly too much for the rather finicky pipes of our nearly 50 year old house.

Off to Safeway for Liquid Plumbr.  Let sit.  Nothing.  More LP, more sitting, more nothing.  Much use of plunger (including imprint of hollow handle-top on my palm). Nothing.

Next morning, one more large bottle LP, couple of hours of sitting, more plunger. Nothing.

So, a call was made to the plumbing service  The same plumbing service that was out a few months ago when our incoming water line failed.  Now, to their credit,  they were here within a couple of hours both times, and to their further credit, the receptionist/scheduler didn’t even laugh when I suggested that I was due a freebie.  They just showed up, fixed the problem, and handed me a bill.

So I added it up.  Plumber + ingredients of first batch of chili + ingredients of second batch of chili + multiple bottles of totally and utterly ineffective Liquid Plumbr = $117

All for one pot of chili.

How about you? What’s your most expensive meal disaster?

So, Wednesday, I had a dinner meeting with a local group of writers, and they asked those of us who had gone to RWA to give a brief rundown of what we’d seen & heard. Easy, right?

Uh, no.  Apparently, my brain fell out somewhere along Highway 1—probably slid out the window on one of the hairpin curves and tumbled over the cliff into the Pacific—because I literally could NOT remember more than two of the workshops I’d attended.  In fact, if hard pressed, I would have sworn I didn’t attend more than three. I think it was the usual conference exhaustion followed by the immediate application of serious lazy vacation that did me in. Somewhere between Jenner and that beach horseback ride I mentioned last time, I stopped caring.

Now, fortunately, I’m a champion note taker—modified Cornell style, multiple colors of pens, fast and efficient summarizer—because I was able to learn that I’d actually taken six full workshops and popped in on several more between appointments. I applied those summarizing skills I just mentioned and let the other writers know what they’d missed.  Now, in the interest of memory preservation, I’m going to give you the most important/striking points from each of the full sessions (after the jump). Read the rest of this entry »

I finally caught my breath, I think.  It’s taken me this long to decompress from conference.

That’s mostly due to the fact that I was away for just shy of two weeks. My daughter and I went down early to visit old neighbors who now live in the Bay area.  Last January or so, they invited the girl child to go on a week-long vacation with them. They planned to visit Yosemite, then take a few days at one of the lakes to do some boating. I was supposed to house sit while they were gone, take care of their cats, etc., and then mosey over to SF for the conference after having 5 days of peaceful writers retreat.

Not.

Due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, including *two* Read the rest of this entry »

They’re good kids. Really they are. I love them very, very much. They’re even old enough I don’t have to pay attention to them every minute.

But it snowed Sunday night, enough that the district cancelled school yesterday, so they were home all day. Wanting to talk. Wanting to eat. Wanting to play video games. Wanting to *breathe*. I don’t know about other writers, but I have issues with people who breathe while I’m writing, or at least when I’m starting a project. Until my characters manifest fully and are so clear in my head that they refuse to go away until the story’s done, the presence of other people in the same vicinity rips me out of the zone (Twilight Zone, Writing Zone, whatever). I need not just privacy, but solitude.

So, you say, that was yesterday. I have my solitude back today. Why am I bitching?

Because it’s snowing again. Big, floofy flakes right out of the last scene of White Christmas. Gorgeous. I should be smiling. Instead, I’m thinking that if it keeps up, they might cancel school again tomorrow.

Sigh.

Lisa

UPDATE! (Weds, 30 Jan 08) — Yep. They’ve closed the schools, and in the nastiest possible way. At 7am when I checked, there was only a 2 hour delayed start. Then at 8am, one of the kids’ friends called to say it had changed to a full closure. That makes 4 days off in the last 8. (A holiday and an inservice day last week, and 2 snow days this week. So far).

Sigh