Nobody Told Me There'd Be Days Like These

Okay, whew. Forgive (again) my lack of blogging, but I've been over in Eastern Washington with the in-laws, and, yes, Virginia, there are still houses in America with no wi-fi.

To hit the highlights:

1. Book and Game in Walla Walla is a wonderful store in a wonderful town. It's like a mini University Bookstore, and the location on Main Street, flanked by all kinds of locally-owned, upscale restaurants in historic buildings, can't be beat. Thank you to Ben and Nathan for your help in set-up and for fetching me an Earl Grey, as if I were a VIP. If you're ever in town, we hit up Brasserie Four for dinner (the quiche!) and Olive for dessert. When the guy at Olive rang up my Olympic-sized lemon bar and brownie and cup of milk for $5, I could not believe it.
2. Only 1/3 of the event attendees were related to me (2 out of--gulp!--6), and only 1/3 of the attendees were related to each other (again, 2 out of 6, but not the same 2). However, per capita they bought more books than my last two events. Nice.
3. The next day, my husband's aunt swung by and wanted a copy, although she quailed when she heard there was bad language in it. "But not the F word, right?" she said, hopefully.
4. We saw a gen-u-Ine beaver near Howard Amon Park, not steps from where Cass plays with James' nieces. I should have made that scene more realistic by having one of the nieces step in goose poop.
5. And, final highlight, our return trip in the trusty minivan was epic, thanks to nonstop snow that prevented us coming back the speedy way over Snoqualmie Pass. We resorted to the very long and very scenic detour through the Columbia Gorge where the wind gusts threatened to hurl us into the river, followed by downpours straight out of Dante of rain and hail. Amazing. All that for 10 books!

There must be an easier way to lose money.

However, if there is, I'm not going to explore it yet because my cover designer and I have agreed on a tentative cover for the sequel to MOURNING BECOMES CASSANDRA. The title of the new book? Drumroll, please.....THE LITTLEST DOUBTS! (Without the exclamation point.)

More to follow. For now, though, I think I'd better go lie down.

It's Got a Few Adverbs

Okay, so long time no post. I have been doing the absolute bare minimum in every area of my life, for the past few weeks, and I have no better excuse than that I have been finishing my second book. Finishing. As in, I am, as of this morning, done with the rough draft! Now the manuscript heads off to my critique group for gross- and fine-tuning. Shooting for another June release. Title still TBD, although I have a front-runner.

And, in case you haven't been following the dribs and drabs in this blog, the book is the --sigh--sequel. (Nathan Bransford's disparaging of sequels notwithstanding.). It picks up almost right where MOURNING BECOMES CASSANDRA left off, and there are old friends and new.

I must say practice helps. I think this one is better. Or at least better-written.

I still do some egregious things, according to Elmore Leonard and his list of writing no-nos. For example, I cannot break myself from using the occasional adverb modifying the word "said," she said apologetically. I also don't always use "said" as the sole verb marking dialogue, she pointed out. On the plus side, I don't tend to begin books with weather and several readers have complained that I am all too sparing with descriptions.

Hope you all like it. When I've got a cover designed I'll get a chapter up on Scribd for ya.

Shut the Front Door

I know--I'm posting two days in a row. This is called procrastinating, because I'm supposed to be paying my bills on line and drumming up Bible study questions for next week. Before I get to that, I thought I'd blog on cussing.

Yesterday I was typing away on my as-yet-untitled sequel to MOURNING BECOMES CASSANDRA, which in itself was a procrastination tactic because I'm completely hung up on my YA novel and going nowhere fast. Anyhow, there is Joanie under my nimble fingers, and out of her mouth pops a cuss word. Now, as my readers know, I mostly confined the cussing in MBC to the non-churchgoing characters, but here was Joanie saying what she said. For a few minutes I considered options: (1) no cussing--but she was really ticked!; (2) saying indirectly, "Joanie let fly a frustrated expletive"--in my humble opinion I just think that leads the reader to substitute his favorite cuss word, in which case the synapse in his head fires no matter what; (3) just using the dinged word--I went with this; or (4) using what I did in (3), a euphemism.

Euphemisms happen to be my cussing style of choice with kids around. Euphemisms and my handy, but occasionally malfunctioning, personal mute button. (Aside: my oldest has gotten adept enough at reading my lips when I'm muted that I had a squirmy moment when we were watching the baseball playoffs, and one of the players had a lip-reading moment after striking out.) After saying "darn" in a sermon one week, my husband received an email reminding him that the euphemism is as bad as the cuss word in God's eyes--thank you, you sainted soul. If you happen to be reading this blog, please skip this post. Oh, and all my other posts. Oh, and probably my book, too.

In order for a euphemism to be effective as a substitute cuss word in times of frustration, it has to have a goodly number of syllables and feature satisfying consonants. Some of my personal go-to euphemisms include:

Admiral Chester T. Nimitz! (I found out his middle initial was actually "W," which prompted another euphemism.)

Newt Gingrich! (G's are particularly satisfying.)

Kaiser Wilhelm! (With the "W" pronounced as a "V," in true German fashion.)

And a new favorite, courtesy of Leslie M., to be said in tones of incredulity: Shut the front door!

Sample conversation:
Husband: Honey, I got a 200% raise today.

Wife: Shut the front door!

Any favorite euphemisms you want to share?

Have His Carcase

Agent Nathan Bransford warns about the self-publisher's frequent pitfalls in his blog, including susceptibility to "Acute Sequelitis," an inability to let one's first, self-published novel and its characters go, although that novel may never be picked up by a mainstream publishing house, and its sequel certainly won't. I mention this because I already have the disease and just wanted to let you all know, in case you wanted to send flowers. In my defense, I did try to branch out and write a middle-grade novel, the partial submission of which Bransford himself kindly requested and then just as kindly rejected.

In any case, it got me to thinking about sequels of all sorts. It isn't only authors who fall in love with characters and would love to keep hearing about their (mis)adventures till every last one of them is dead. I keep telling myself I've read enough #1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY, and then I keep seeing a new one on the library rack and checking it out. Like a fool, I also tried Donald McCaig's RHETT BUTLER'S PEOPLE, despite Alexandra Ripley's SCARLETT almost doing me in, years ago. (McCaig's book actually isn't bad until it intersects with the original...) Then of course there are all the children's series I devoured: BETSY-TACY, Montgomery's ANNE and EMILY books, good old NANCY DREW, LITTLE HOUSE, HARRY POTTER, L'Engle's A WRINKLE IN TIME and its successors.

Maybe adult sequels are less satisfying, especially when written by a different author. After snapping up every Dorothy Sayers mystery I could find, Jill Paton Walsh's additions proved impossible to get through. It wasn't that her plots were bad--it was just she wasn't Sayers, and her Lord Peter and Harriet moved and spoke like reanimated corpses. Better to have one's own characters.

Can you think of adult sequels you enjoyed? Ones that aren't movies? I'm coming up blank. This may be the sign that I should dump the six draft chapters of my sequel and go back to revamping that middle-grade novel. Or that other, highly marketable idea I've been kicking around: JANE AUSTEN'S WEEKEND AT THE SHACK WITH VAMPIRES.