Where's my internet! Aggg!

Ok, here's what happened. Last weekend, I called the phone company to complain about a problem that's been going on for the last few years -- when it rains, I can barely use the phone because of the noise. It doesn't bother me all of the time, so I let it go.

Wednesday, the young man came to fix the telephone. I was on the internet when he was up on the pole, and I noticed I wasn't connected to the internet anymore. I thought, ok, no problem, he probably had to disconnect something. I finished my transaction at my workplace before I started work.

Wednesday night, the clarity on my phone was great. But I had no internet. I spent at least an hour on the phone while they tested various things. The phone company's position is that I needed a new modem, which will come within 3 -5 business days. Oh, great. So you see no connection with the guy on the pole and my lack of internet? Guess not.

I grant that I'm not all that technical with computers and my modem is a few years old. Maybe it is the modem, maybe not.

But, in the meantime, I never realized before how much I'm entertained and informed by the internet until it was taken away from me. Argh. I check it at work. (I do adjust my time for the internet checking.) I even connected my phone line to my old computer and used Juno's dial-up. (Slow, and the IE on that computer is very, very old.)

I'm going through withdrawal. I'm begging time from my local coffee shop (Thanks, LA Coffee!) and my sister (Thanks, Kathleen and Bob!) I'm wishing I had a phone that had its own wi-fi. What would be worse? If I didn't have a computer!

And that's just plain sad. I'm old enough to have lived before widespread computer usage, before the internet, before cable, before pocket calculators. Howcum I miss my internet so much?

I don't know. *sigh*

Well, back to the real world for me. Just don't expect me to reply very fast.

Synchronicity and frustration

I was turned down by another agent this morning, which I suppose is not terribly surprising. I'm not arrogant; I don't believe I've written the great American Novel. I do believe that it's at publishable level and is relatively entertaining and enlightening in its way, and I keep trying to think of ways to improve it or places to send it. Still, it is discouraging. I know the stats. I know how many places J.K. Rowling submitted before “Harry Potter” clicked with a publisher. I’m trying to keep an attitude of “Ok, it’s just a hobby.” Mostly I do. Today – I suppose because it’s Monday and I was a work – I was grumpy.

Then I got a good review from one of my stories on FanFiction.net. Synchronicity! Or, perhaps, a message. I am a Christian; I don’t advertise it, I’m not one to sit you down and try to convert you. (I had enough of that long before I became a Christian.) But perhaps this was God’s way of telling me to not be discouraged?

This has happened a couple of times! I get discouraged, then I get good news about something I wrote. Gives me hope.

Synchronicity. I’m now looking for fortuosity. (And if you don’t know what that is, take a look at this link to a: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-mDrxLVuVU (copyright Disney)

To Mom, with Love

My mother left us five years ago. She could be irritable, demanding, and insistent. She wasn't always patient, and did not suffer fools gladly. She could be mad at you one minute, and concerned in the next. She hated housework, dishes, and sewing, yet she was a housewife all of her life. She was often in pain from a neck injury, and had headaches every day. In the last six years of her life, she lived in a nursing home, and because extremely patient.

She was also loving, supportive, fun, and funny. She didn't need to discipline me, she could quell me with a look. She went to my choir concerts, even though she was extremely tune-deaf and couldn't tell one note from the next. She always knew when I had done my best, but then she knew when I could do better and encouraged me to do so. She lived long enough to see me published and was happy for me, even though she wasn't able to read my story.

She was a fan of all Disney Parks, cozy mysteries, and the original version of Star Trek. She loved to travel, and she loved taking slides and pictures. She loved her husband of 50 years, her daughters, sons-in-law, and her grandchildren.

She was my friend, and I miss her.

To you, Mom!

Thoughts on reviews -- should I care?

I received my second review the other day on one of the Smashwords stories I put up -- "Second-Hand Princess." The reviewer, "Caite" said:

"A very muddled story, with a Princess who never acquires a name, a Prince with an unpronounceable one, and entirely too many typographical and grammatical errors to be readable. Lovely premise, poor execution. (review of free book)."

I've spent the last few days trying to decide what I thought of this review. It's not bad. My initial thought was to ignore it, but then I wondered: was she right? I think what worried me more was not the muddled story or the poor execution part -- that's opinion -- but the part about typographical and grammatical errors.

So tonight I ran the story through Microsoft Word's grammar and spelling corrector. Yes, she was right. I wouldn't call it unreadable, but I found at least two spelling errors, one of which wouldn't have been caught by spell check. I also replaced a number of periods with commas. *sigh*.

The rest is her opinion, although I'm still trying to figure out how the name "Aarach" is entirely unpronounceable. The name doesn't seem as hard as some I've seen, such as Lois McMaster Bujold's "Miles Naismith Vorkosigan." (I discovered I was pronouncing it wrong when I listened to the audio books.)

That's fine. While I would like other people to enjoy my stories -- that's why I put them out there -- I mostly enjoy writing them. And that's all that counts. In my opinion!

If it's free, they will come? A rambling blog.

I've always taken my writing seriously, ever since 9th grade, and Mrs. Van Atta said I wrote good poetry. When I got to high school and 10th grade, I wanted to join the school newspaper, which, unfortunately, was on the way out. I don't remember the details now -- maybe Sue S. does -- but somehow Mrs. Longanecker was convinced to be our advisor, and the Wildcat Weekly was back. I started writing articles and discovered something.

I like being edited.

I like being edited, because it was the only way I could learn what I did wrong.

To my eyes, my writing is perfect. The newer it is, the more perfect it is. I enoy reading my own stories. But, practically, I know my writing is not perfect, and I need improvement.

I am not a perfectionist; far from it. I don't search for exactly the right word to fit into a story. I don't take forever to write. I do subscribe to Dean Wesley Smith's theory that a story should be written once, but not necessarily re-written. I clean my stories up, I try to catch all of the dangling plot points, but I'm not obsessive about it.

Which, 'round about, brings me back to Smashwords.com and fanfiction.net. I want feedback. I want the ego-boo, of course, but I want feedback. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect reviews, but the feedback I get here is how many people look at my stories. I guess it gives me verification that I actually might be doing something right. One of my stories on fanfiction.net has over 1200 hits. A story I just put up last week at Smashwords.com for free already has 145 downloads. Makes me feel good.

But does it mean my storytelling is good? I don't know.

You tell me.

Grumpy, Sleepy, and more dwarves

There are those days when I feel like all of Disney's seven dwarves. I'm constantly Sleepy. And, when I'm sleepy, I'm Grumpy. Dopey is a given. Bashful, well, usually. With the allergies I have, I'm also Sneezy. Sometimes I'm Happy. Doc is a hard one -- well, I do stammer like Doc, especially when I'm Sleepy.

I guess I should be grateful I don't have a long white beard.

Yesterday I received an edit from one of my fanzine editors. That's always humbling. I look at the corrections and think, geez, I should have known that, I should have seen that, what was I thinking? Today, I received notice that one of my stories is a finalist in a fan story contest (Fan-Q awards at MediaWest*con), which is totally cool. Six years ago, I won had a story published in a professional anthology, and the editor changed one word. ONE word! Haven't sold anything since.

So my writing life is Grumpy, Happy, Grumpy, Happy. I love to write, but am I fooling myself with my talent or lack of talent?

I guess I keep writing and keep hoping that I hit gold again, and suffer through all the dwarves!

My Novel

A year ago, I posted the first scene of my first novel. I've edited it since then, so here's the new version:

How I Learned to Hate Shadows
Or
The Demons of my Sophomore Year
By L.J. Anderson


I had that dream again that morning. My Dad and I were in our kitchen. He was cooking hamburgers – Mom had to work late – and besides he wanted some father and daughter time. We had just begun to talk. I didn’t want to tell him, but I was having a hard time in school. He prodded until he finally got it out of me. I told him I knew no-one liked me. He laughed, said, except for your buddy, Bennie, and asked how I knew no-one liked me. I said, I just do. I didn’t wanted to tell him that I found could feel what everybody else thought, except for him and Mom. He got serious and asked, are people bullying you? I put my head down. I never could lie to Daddy. I lifted my head up. I was going to tell him. I know they hate me, Daddy, because I can read people’s minds, I said.
He looked surprised.
I thought I saw something dark enter his chest.
Then he collapsed.
I screamed.
I fell to the ground toward him.
He was staring at me.
No, he wasn’t. He was just staring.
He wasn’t breathing.
I grabbed the telephone and dialed 911.
Just as they answered, I woke up, sat up, and trembled. Why? I started crying. Why did he have to die? Why couldn’t they save him? I was still so angry. And why was I having this dream now? The dreams had just begun to go away. And what was the deal with that dark thing that entered Dad's chest? Did that mean something?
It took me a long time to get back to sleep that night. Then, of course, the next day, they came.
#
I was just leaning into my locker, looking for my mythology book and wondering what the heck was dark at the bottom – my old gym clothes? -- when I heard a voice behind me.
"I need to ask you something, Jaimie."
I sighed, shut my locker, shifted my backpack, cast a quick spell to keep us from being overheard, then turned around. I like Bennie, I really do, but Bennie's requests were always a bit odd, and, quite frankly, the entire school thinks we're odd enough. I mean, they really don't know about my -- our odd abilities, but we're not athletes, we're not cheerleaders, and we're not brainy geeks.
Ok, I'm kinda a weirdo, and I know Bennie's a geek, but we don't advertise it, ok? He even kind of looks like a geek; short, skinny, red hair, and glasses.
Whereas I look like the class weirdo. Instead of frilly things and skirts and those sorts of things, I wore black jeans, black t-shirts, big earrings, and a fake stud on my nose. My Mom didn’t object to the decorations, but she did object to my poking holes in myself “unnecessarily”, she said. So I used the magnetic kind.
“Hi, Bennie.” I looked him up and down. He didn’t look too bad today. He was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. Unfortunately, nothing could hide the fact that he was a little skinny kid. Except his talent.
He shifted from foot to foot and side to side, trying to avoid people who kept bumping into him. You see, Bennie's unique ability -- which only I recognized -- is the ability to be unknown and invisible. No teachers remembered his name. Other kids bumped into him constantly. I'm the class freak. Everybody knew it. It wasn't like I shouted it out on the hallways. But they knew and got out of my way. I guess I projected danger.
“Hey, Jaimie,” he finally said.
"So," I asked Bennie. "What do you need?" I automatically put a spell up so that we wouldn’t be overheard or even noticed. I’m not sure why; I guess it was because our conversations tended to be a little… odd.
“I keep thinking I see shadows on the ceiling. Do you see them?”
I blinked. “Huh?” I stirred my gym clothes. No, nothing dark there. “What do you mean by shadows?” I was still concentrating on finding my Mythology book – that was my next class. Then I looked at him. Shadows? Something dark? Naw, he didn't know anything about my dream. I dismissed the thought.
He grimaced. “I’m not sure, exactly. I just kept seeing things out of the corner of my eyes.”
Bennie can sometimes be a little too weird for me. There was this one time he thought he was a vampire because there was a bat in his house until I pointed out he walked to school in the sunshine. Then there was the time he thought the local Catholic priest was a wizard because he heard that he turned bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ. I had to look up Catholicism which led to Consubstantiation -- which I’m not even going to try to explain -- all trying to prove the priest wasn’t a wizard. I’m still not sure he believed me.
The vapid brunette that has the locker next to mine bumped into Bennie. He shifted over. "Don't you think that's weird?"
“That you see things out of the corner of your eyes?” I started walking down the hall, noticing that the lights did seemed dim today. Probably just a little brown-out. We just added a computer room, and it seemed to draw a lot of electricity. This school is so old… we were in a district that believed that you put the teacher on one side of the log, the student on the other, and maybe a ten year old book between them. I especially liked the puddle that went from the roof, down through the wall to the first floor.
I bypassed the puddle and went down the hall. Our next class was down this hall, to the right. Mrs. Short was our Mythology teacher, a sweet lady. I heard another teacher say that she was just this side of retirement, although she seemed ancient to me. In fact, they only kept Mythology on as part of the English curriculum as a favor for her, as long as she taught it as literature.
Bennie sat next to me, like he always did. Mrs. Short kept looking over us. I suddenly realized that my spell was still going. Not that I think Bennie knew the difference.
Mrs. Short blinked at me. "Jaimie! Where did you come from?"
I shrugged. "I've been here."
She blinked. "So you have." She then started lecturing on Zeus. Which was okay. He sounded like a powerful Dude, with a capital D.
But I found myself thinking about Bennie and the shadows he saw out of the corner of his eye.
"Jaimie." Mrs. Short was looking at me. Suddenly, the lights dimmed again. I looked around, but nobody else noticed. I shrugged and shook my head. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Short. I guess I was up too late last night." Jen, the head cheerleader, laughed. I know what she was thinking, and suddenly I thought I knew what she had been doing last night. I stared at her steadily, and said "Ian. Right?" She stopped laughing, blushed, and turned away after a sideways glare.
A shadow fell over my paper. I looked up. Ok, that was freaky. The lights still looked dim, but nothing was there. Then I felt something. Beside me, Bennie grabbed my arm and shivered. I looked at him. He looked at me. The kids behind us snickered. Bennie released my arm with a jerk.
Mrs. Short looked at us again. "Is there something wrong?"
I looked down. Mrs. Short was sweet, and I really hated to lie to her. "I thought I saw a mouse. Bennie said I didn't." I saw the shadow again – it looked like black ink now -- and then it dove for me. I ducked. "I'm sorry."
I saw Bennie look at his hand. The shadow had touched him, and where it had touched him, the spot was pure white. I touched it -- ice cold. I stared at it. What the --
I looked at him. Bennie looked like he was in pain, and that worried me. He may be paranoid and weird, but his pain tolerance was very high. I’ve seen him beat up and shrug off his bruises. So if he was showing he was in pain, well, he was. "Mrs. Short, may we go to the nurse?" I said.
"I'm all right," Bennie muttered.
"No, you're not," I murmured.
I extended my control so that everybody froze but Bennie and me. I don’t like to do that too often, it’s too tiring. He looked around. "You scare me sometimes."
I looked up at the ceiling. It was like watching a Koi pool, but in reverse. “And those things don’t?" I yelled. "Do you want to sit in this class and freeze to death?"
He looked down. "No."
I started time again. Mrs. Short was looking at us compassionately. "Of course. You need to go to the nurse." I practically snatched the slip out of her hands, grabbed Bennie's hand, and rushed out of the room.