9 Things That Make My Life Difficult

1. Ignoring my deeper peeves in life that revolve around the English language and how it’s used and abused, one of the greatest peeves in my life is clothing sizes. More specifically, the delusional folks who determine them. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t America in a sort of ‘omg we’re so fat’ stage right now? So why, for the love of that is holy and dipped in chocolate, are clothing sizes so disproportionately accounting for those of us of above standard-American-lingerie -model size in girth?

I found one website that says, “Please review our size chart as our shirts run small. Material also shrinks once washed.” Okay, WTF? And the largest size they carry? XL. That means their idea of XL to me is like a junior miss small. It’s not like I want to wear sleeveless, midriff shirts and frighten and/or revolt unsuspecting innocent bystanders with my stretch mark contour map of the Ukraine. These are t-shirts, for crying out loud. Another peevish place is Hot Topic. My girls shop there. I can only stand and look around with a dirty look on my face. Their idea of an XL is like a toddler sized medium.

Sometimes I wonder if the madness is to do with the countries and child labor sweat shops half our clothes come from, but that’s a sensitive subject matter I’ll refrain from blogging about with any specificity.

*rant done*

2. Things that are so very bad for me and my priceless time: Websites. I can spend hours scrolling through A Softer World’s strip comics, especially when it takes ages to load the image. I am sure I will never finish Mcsweeney.net as there is too much infinitely amusing content. Don’t even get me started on Cracked.com. I spent every spare second for two months there and have grounded myself from it ever since I managed to pull my head up for air.

3. My uncomfortable desk chair that thinks my legs don’t need blood.

4. My cat. He is the boss of me, and I can’t even quit.

5. A few of my kids’ friends’ parents who make ME look responsible. Yeah, they’re that bad. Too many have dubbed me Mommy#2.

6. Unobliging lottery balls. Nuff said.

7. My body’s insistence that I need at least five hours of sleep a day. This seriously cuts into my website reading. I mean… my writing.

8. Texas heat. Seriously, why is under 100 degrees an impossibility? We’re in the middle of the worst drought in history (which made lakes dry up and pieces of the Challenger shuttle were found) and now this slice of heaven just hit the news, “The Texas power grid operator has scrambled this week to meet soaring electricity demand in the face of a brutal heatwave, and residents of the second most populous U.S. state are one power plant shutdown away from rolling blackouts.” No one wants to see me hot. Seriously, I’m an angry lady when I’m hot.

9. Internet ‘improvement updates’ that make all my functions stop working like they used to. I’ve had to basically write off Skype and Youtube, and gmail started to destroy my formatting when sending an email. Hence, I sent a particularly awful looking query out without realizing it. Copy/paste into the box is a disastrous thing to do these days, apparently. Funny how it’s always been just fine for YEARS. If anyone knows why this is, please tell me. I’m afraid to query now.

Feeling Funk-tabulous

I've noticed a trend on the bloggosphere and around about. The funks are setting in. At first I thought it was just me and I felt bad for being such a bad blogging friend, but I'm starting to notice a trend. I think many of us have hit a spot in our lives/writing/blogging/working/whatever where we're just kinda blah.

I fought it over the weekend and got a few thousand words done on my WIP, but I'm not really happy with it. My CPs have no complaints, but it's missing something to me. Maybe it's part of my funk. Maybe even if it was better than Austen (nope) I'd still think it sucked.

I'm at 55 rejections and 16 no replies. Not a single partial. I think I only had one personal rejection. It's this and other things that are going on in my life that make me question my worth. If I'm even any good. I wonder if I'm an idiot. A dreamer. Nuts.

Okay, I know I'm nuts. Let's leave that one alone for now.

I want to keep going on and on about all the things in my life that are going wrong, but that'd just be a pity party and I hate that. I'm just venting, I guess.

So, this is me checking in on Wednesday. I know my posts are inconsistent, but I blog when the mood strikes. You people with schedules boggle my mind. I'm never good at keeping a schedule or having plans. My plans always fall apart, so I quit bothering.

Side note: Don't forget about my contest. If you don't have time, that's cool. I'm using it also as a way to get myself in gear. I want to finish my WIP by the contest deadline so I can devote all my time to the contestants.

I hope everyone's summer is not as hot as mine has been lately. The electric company is going to LOVE me. I can't wait to see the bill.

Anyone else feeling funk-tabulous? Maybe we're a hive psyche. One starts to feel down and it spreads across the blog hive.

I Live... and found a soapbox upon which to climb

So, I've been absent of late, I know. Over the weekend it was because I was busy with my WIP, in which I got a total of 6400 words added from Tuesday-Sunday. Monday after work through until about an hour ago, I was away from home. Had some more hospital business to take care of. Don't fret for me, I'm totally fine. Well, as fine as I have been lately. I took a laptop to try to keep up with everyone, but that didn't work out well. The stupid space bar was a demon sent from Hell to torture me. Plus there's something about hospitals that makes me tired. I slept a lot and watched The History Channel.

I've been fretting lately. I try not to let reality cloud my life, but sometimes I poke my head out of my internal goings on and look around. I'm not happy, friends. Not one bit. This blog was created for the purpose of meeting other writers, and so far I think I've blogged about writing and other writers. I don't discuss politics or the tragedies occuring around the world. I watch in horror with the rest of you, but keep my thoughts to myself.

Tonight, I'm going to say a few things that have nothing to do with writing. If you're reading this for pure entertainment value, I fear there's none to find tonight. This post will be about getting to know me. Not what I like or what I enjoy, but what I care about most, second to my family. My country, the United States of America, and to my eye there has been little 'United' about us for some time, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

To Nick's (and possibly Terry's) horror, I'm not 'into' politics. I'm not a Republican, Democrat, Independent, Libertarian, Montana Militite, Anarchist, Socialist, Communist, Fascist, or the like. Groups worry me. They always have. I understand the uses of government, and I've worked for a couple of them. I understand, and obey, the laws (speeding doesn't count. That's more of a guideline to me).

I am a patriot. If invaded, I would pick up arms and defend my country, my home, my family, my friends. I support our troops. My future son-in-law is in Iraq right now. I don't agree with the war, as a political tool. I agree with the war for what its purpose was to be: to find the bastards who killed so many Americans and tried to kill the rest of us through fear.

I remember September 11, 2001, don't you? Don't you remember where you were when you first heard the news? It was horrifying to think a plane could accidentally strike a Tower. Then the second plane struck, and we were a nation under attack. There was a mad scramble to find loved ones, to find other planes in the air. I was in St. Louis which was in an entirely different time zone, but military jets were in our skies for days, on patrol. Do you remember that feeling? It felt like everything would change, and it has. It has.

We have an Islamic president now. Not a single person would have thought that possible ten years ago, and certainly not after September 11th. I have no problem with his color or his faith. I have several friends who are of the same race and religion. I am only remarking on how strange it is that we, as a nation, as a group of people, joined together and looked past these things instead of condemn him. It is often in our nature to do that, to condemn those that are different than ourselves. I am happy, I truly am, that we did not do that. It shows great strides in our thinking, in our ability to rationalize on merit and strengths.

Here's what I do have a problem with: Healthcare Reform. Do we need it? Absolutely. Our system is broken. I know. I work for a health insurance company. Many people point there fingers at us and blame us for all that is going wrong with heathcare, but it's incredibly off the mark. I'm not a manager or higher-up. I have no influence whatsoever, and am not being a company loyalist. If you knew me at all, you'd know how I don't like big business. My dad calls me Flower Child half the time.

What I know is this: the average American cannot afford to be without coverage. Why? Because hospital and doctor claims are outrageously expensive. Often a patient goes untreated -turned away- if they don't have coverage. This is not the insurance companies' fault. Healthcare providers like to point their fingers at the big, bad insurance companies, but consider this: if they were less expensive, would we need insurance? They say they are expensive because of their malpractice insurance. This is NOT health insurance. This is an entirely separate issue covered by a different kind of insurance company. Doctors hike their rates to pay for their malpractice insurance rates, insurance that exists to compensate a patient when the doctor has made a medical mistake and endangered (or ended) their lives.

So, the healthcare providers make mistakes, which their insurance carrier pays for, then increases their rate to get some of it back, and the doctor turns around and charges the future patients. The bottom line is, you (and I) are paying for our healthcare providers' mistakes. That doesn't make them evil. Healthcare is a business. Shoplifting at Wal-Mart yields the same results. Customers pay for losses, not companies, not businesses. There IS something incredibly wrong with the healthcare system, I totally agree. But, like publishing, I defy anyone to find a better way to do it that doesn't cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Which leads me to my next soapbox moment. Unemployment. We're not recovered from the recession. We're barely holding our own. To dissolve insurance companies would put hundreds of thousands of people out of work. But it doesn't end there. $12 billion cut from our education system?? Seriously??? 100,000-300,000 teachers are getting pink-slipped in June. They've also put a dissolution of NASA into the works. There's tens of thousands more jobs in the toilet. So, healthcare, education, and space exploration (not to mentional all the techological advances we've NASA to thank, and so many more we'll never have). This one is also close to home to me. Robert Goddard was a great man, a rocket scientist, a pioneer, a relative.

Another couple of things to mull over: a bill has been sent for approval to give police the right to use lethal force during peaceful demonstrations if they feel they are in danger. They can fire into a crowd of unnarmed civilians if one trigger-happy nervous rookie so chooses. I love the police. I really do. Again, it's in the relations. But bad things happen when this sort of thing is allowed, and it goes against our Constitutional right to peacefully protest. Also in the works is for every American to have 'papers' in addition to a driver's license, to have a passport whether we want or need one or not.

Think about all of these things: socialized healthcare, dropped importance on education and research, increase on military, the loss of peaceful protesting, the mandate to have freedom of movement restricted without proper papers. I feel like the toad that sat in the pot too long to notice it has begun to boil.

If you made it all the way to the bottom, thank you for hearing me out. I'm a frustrated American. I'm not anyone special. My opinion is mine, and I love that I live in a country where I can share it without fear of persecution. I'm just afraid it's slipping away. There's something going incredibly wrong with our country. Can't you feel it? Are you afraid like me? Or are you clicking 'unfollow' now because you think I'm a whiny ignorant woman who is a Big Bad Insurance Tool? Can any of you make some sense out of it all, allay my fears?

Short Post

I've been at it forever, and I just finished my samarai slashing of my manuscript. It was over 150,000 words, but I tossed a subplot. That took it down to 127,306. I'm happy to report that I've slashed it another 11,624 words. It's urban fantasy so it's longer than average. But ALL the foam is gone and the only thing to go now would be entire scenes if an agent wants it smaller.

My eyes are killing me. 'Night, y'all.

Just to Say It

Have you ever deliberately said something rather stupid? Like, you thought it over for a long while, stewed over it, agonized over it, knowing it was stupid but you just HAD to say it? Yeah, I did that today. Doing my usual agent browsing on Query Tracker, I was sending off queries to agents who list 'fantasy' as one of their topics. Ho-hum, type type type, enter into Excel to track so I don't double send... "WHOA!!!!"

That's pretty much what my eyes and heart said when I look at 'Clients' on one agent and I see that he is Dean Koontz's agent. My idol. The god upon whom my worship falls. I've been reading him since before I hit puberty, and I even wrote a nine page letter to him once and he WROTE ME BACK. It was amazing. Anyway, I'm thinking to myself 'well, this agent is WAAAAAAAAAAAAY out of my league, but what the hell...' So, I look at the submission guidelines and they're DIFFERENT than everyone else's. It said 'Write a paragraph about yourself.'

I was stumped. Totally stumped. Stared at the flashing cursor for ages with no idea where to start. Inevitably, thoughts like 'well, he's not going to represent YOU, moron, so what's it hurt to be totally honest?' start to take root. Eventually the evil voices in my head win out(after a LOOOOOONG debate of about five minutes. Which is long for ME. I've got ADHD) and I write my dazzling paragraph. With frank honesty. Go me. That man is going to open that email (or most likely his assistant) and think 1. I was on crack, or 2. It was some ploy to get noticed. It wasn't, honest. I was just...certain of my query's fate so went for the gusto.

I won't share all the grisly details. I just know that I said things (no TMI) that were less than professional when it came to what they ACTUALLY wanted to know about me.

added note after the fact: He stopped representing Koontz five years ago. I feel like a total idiot now.

Maybe I'm Just Naive

So, I had thought in this day and age of political correctness sexist behavior was poor sportsmanship (sportspersonship?). I had thought that a person's sex should have no bearing on their credentials in most every aspect of opinions and voice (save for men speaking of breastfeeding or women discussing prostate exams) and all thoughts were created equal. Au, contraire. How wrong I have been. First I read from 'the respected sources' that people are not sure about books written by women with a male protag's voice. Okay, fine. Whatever floats your boat. Doesn't seem quite fair to me, but hey, what do I know? Then things start to slant even further as time goes by. One blogger I frequent has said 'someone mentioned...' twice now in his entries, and that person was me - a woman. Other times he mentions 'male person said' and gives a name. Again, I let that slide. I'm a pretty understanding lass. I guess the last straw came when I offered a suggestion on a site, got no response, then a male said the same thing I did below me, then several people go 'oh, yeah. I love manly man's advice.' ARGH. Am I just talking to myself???

Okay, rant done.

Things That Amuse

Do you ever get tickled by something, then there's no one around at that moment to share how funny it is?

Example: I was reading reviews for the book NEED on a site, and it had this one:

"If you asked Stephen King and Stephanie Myers to co-author a book, they would come up with NEED." -Justine Magazine

This amuses me for several reasons. Firstly, they spelled the second author's name wrong, as it should be 'Meyer' and secondly, which was truly the source of my infinite amusement, King would never work with Meyer. Okay, he didn't come out and say it, but he said enough for me to know that he thinks what I do - the writing is not that great. I won't say more in case I offend others who like the story.

Another amusing thing that I saw was a new writer at a blog I go to has a clear knock-off of a popular movie, and repeated attempts to get her to highlight the differences have failed. This in and of itself is not amusing (okay, maybe a little bit), but the transparent scheme to create a new account and address the blog owner who is an agent and tell them that the 'other' author has 'what looks like a best seller' and they should go look at it to tell her how to write it better. *Headdesk-but laughing. A lot.* My point is that I had NO ONE to IM, call, or otherwise harrass into seeing this fabulousness because none of my friends care about that sort of thing. *SIGH*

So, I'm sharing it with the void. I'm highly amused this morning.

So, I Think it's Time to Re-Think YA

I've always been pretty sure what I thought was YA, but now I'm starting to think my novel is not that. The more I read about what teenagers expect from a book (as I always just read them and had my own expectations), the more I see that my book won't fill that need. I feel that there's plenty of kids that will like it, but it has a dark plot and doesn't end all puppies and rainbows. As much as I don't want to, I think I'm going to have to bump it up to just Fantasy instead of YA Fantasy, especially since (if the series gets to continue) my main character ages twenty years by the end of the story. My thinking at the time (which now is so amateur and idiotic) was that, as a teenager, I greatly enjoyed books like Dune and Mists of Avalon which were about young kids who eventually became adults and had children, so why wouldn't kids enjoy my book that will do the same? Geez, Christi, maybe because those books weren't YA. *slaps self on forehead*

Stuck in My Own Personal Query Hell

Do you ever get that incredible sinking feeling? I've had it all day since I realized that the query I sent to ten potential agents was crap. C-R-A-P *capital period.* My story is pretty interesting, I think. I've got kids from 12-19 that love it, and adults from 30-55 years old that love it and wonder why on earth I am not published yet. No, I don't mean relatives and friends. The problem is clearly my shitty query letter that is boring. How do I know it's boring? Because I posted it on a forum board AND (gods help me) Query Shark, and the vote was unanimous: boring boring boring. Maybe I should feel at least a little special that Janet picked my query to review and didn't really rip me to shreds; just said I don't have any specifics which made it boring. So, on I plod, trying to formulate that shining, radiant query that will make an agent spit their coffee out and shriek "MATSUTAKE!" ....or something to that effect.