The first is the Newbie series, for people who are new to me, to writing, and are wondering what the hell I mean when I say POV. I’m looking for confusing vocabulary (such as ms, WIP/MIP, POV, etcetera) and confusing concepts (currently on my list: Discovery, Structure, Positive Goal, etcetera.) These will be short, simple pieces, explaining the basics so that when someone says, “You need a positive goal,” it’s not completely out of left field. Please comment here with anything that used to throw you, or is currently throwing you.

The second is a Structure series. The thing about structure is that you need one, but you can choose from loads. As long as they do two things – escalate your conflict and keep your story building toward something – they’re good. So far, there’s classic Aristotle who started the whole damn thing, I’ve got a basic structure based on it, Crusie has a basic structure based on it, there’s the Hero’s Journey (Vogler) and… others. Gimme the others. Does McKee have one? Been forever since I read that book. What are your favorites? What have you used? What do you want to try? Comment here, with links if it can be found online, and I’ll include them.

You can look for these to go up in the next few weeks. You can subscribe via iTunes, or hit the Entries RSS in the sidebar here and be notified when I post them here.

And, let me just say, from the bottom of my desperate writer’s heart – THANK YOU. And may you be blessed with a wondrous and fantastical new year.

Anyway, this has to happen in publishing. Indie publishing is the wave of the future, I believe it. I desperately want to start it, but I have no idea how to make a business like that actually work. My mind doesn’t work that way. But I just read a book that’s got me so fired up, I might just do it, if I can’t get someone in traditional publishing to take it on.

The book is Need to Know by Christine Merrill. I’ve known Christine for years, she’s been publishing fabulous regencies with Mills and Boons for ages, and I read an earlier version of this book that I loved a few years back. I gave her my feedback, recommended her to my agent, and from there it just sort of faltered. Christine had trouble selling it because it wasn’t exactly a romance, not exactly a comedy, not exactly a thriller or a mystery, but it has elements of all of those things. Hard to sell to a mass market. Now, years later, Christine gave up on traditional publishers and put it out herself on Lulu.com. It’s well-written, fabulously plotted, excellently characterized, and sexy as hell. It’s a thriller/mystery with romantic elements, and absolutely no one has heard of it.

Drives me insane.

Look, this is a good book, and as someone who has wasted way too much time reading bestsellers that stunk, I wanted everyone to know about it. Go get it (there’s also a Kindle version on Amazon) and read it, then head over to the Wiffer Forums, and let’s talk about what you thought. I’m really interested to know. And please, if you like it, tell your friends. Tweet it, blog it, get the word out. Because if she doesn’t make enough money off this thing – and I completely understand, girlfriend’s got mouths to feed – there will not be a sequel.

And I don’t know about you, but I need this sequel. So help a girl out, huh? Just read it, and if you don’t absolutely adore it, then consider it a kindness done to a quality author in the spirit of the season. But if you, like me, MUST have the sequel, then pimp the hell out of this book. Because it’s too good to be brutally slain by the mass market.

Edited to Add: Here’s a link to an excerpt of the first couple of chapters. Fabulous, no?

So. Here’s something shiny: The Best Wallpaper Ever.

From VladStudio - Alice in Wonderland: Down the Rabbit Hole

And when I say best wallpaper, I mean all of it. Not just the Alice in Wonderland stuff. There are loads of wonderful holiday designs – I especially like what they do with Halloween – and I found this, which relates perfectly to a theme in The Book That’s Trying To Kill Me:

From VladStudio - Day and Night

Not to mention, wallpaper that looks like… wallpaper:

From VladStudio - Wallpaper

Check it out. Decorate your space. One of the things I’ve learned this year is that environment is important. Every little detail matters, and this stuff is free in the low-quality (a misnomer if ever there was one) versions. Have fun!

Still, we’ve both changed a lot in the last eight years. I didn’t realize how little I actually talked about what I did for a living until last night, when Tracy, Crusie and I sat down and had girl time over tea (and wine.) Tracy started asking all these questions about writing and storytelling and I was astounded that this career was such a central part of my life, and she didn’t know about it. I never talked about it. It was just weird to me, even though I’d born witness to the eight years where we’d drifted apart.

So last night we sat talking, answering questions about story, the difference between movies/TV storytelling and the kind of storytelling you do in books. (Crusie said it best: “It’s a different language.”) And at one point, Crusie said, “Well, in a way, we all tell the same story over and over again. All my books are about the search for community.” I argued; theme is different from story, and her themes all dance around community, but that doesn’t make her stories the same. Plus, community is at the core of all romantic fiction. Romance is the beginning of the build of our own community, our own family, and community and connection is what we hunger for. Or at least, women like us do. Crusie and I were each missing it in our lives, so we built it here on the river, and Tracy’s here joining in for a while, and it’s just right. It’s family, it’s community, it’s what makes us tick, it’s why we pee in groups, and  it’s where the juice is in the book. For us, anyway.

Then, this morning, I caught up on the second half of an episode of the new sitcom, Community, which is about community college, so I certainly wasn’t expecting this:

As silly as that clip is, it hits right to the heart of what makes women women. Going to the bathroom in groups isn’t about going to the bathroom; it’s about disappearing behind a door that’s just for us, and finding our community there.

Up until this clip, I was on the fence about Community, the sitcom, but there’s someone on that writing staff who understands things on a much deeper level, who can tell the absolute truth and still stand back far enough to realize how funny it is. I’m looking forward to seeing what else they pull out of that magic hat this season.

Plus, I’d follow Yvette Nicole Brown off a cliff. I love that woman.

We need a strong health care reform bill with a strong, meaningful public option that will keep the private companies honest, and we need it now.

Please contact your representatives today, and ask them how they plan to vote, and let them know that if this reform doesn’t have their vote, they won’t have yours.

I did. Took five minutes. Felt good.

In other news, I just finished the last class for this session, and it was such a blast. I love teaching and the students were fabulous. I’ll be announcing a new session soon, and those of you who are interested will be able to sign up. Meanwhile, if I’m not around much, don’t take it personally – I’ve got five houseguests cycling in throughout the next month. Plus, I’m doing Nano. So basically, if ever “it’s not you, it’s me” was true, it’s true now. The next time you see me, I’ll likely be drooling into a cup.

And, we make soundtracks.

The benefit of a soundtrack for writers is that music has the innate ability to capture mood and feeling, two things that maybe don’t give you structure and plot, but they definitely give you crunch. You pick out songs to represent certain characters or events in the book, and then you play the playlist over and over while thinking about the book, and it sort of “powers” it for you. It’s an amazing tool, and I wouldn’t write a book without it.

Right now, I’m working on my newest novel, A Little Night Magic, written under my pseudonym, Lucy March. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack while I walk the dogs, while I drive, while I do dishes, and it’s really been paying off. Answers are coming at me from all sides, and I’m building up enough crunch to last me through the drudgery of actual writing. Here’s the soundtrack so far:

You Don’t Have to Believe Me by Eric Hutchinson
Learning Curve by Josh Kelley
In Another Life by The Veronicas
Table for One by Liz Phair
Back to Where I Was by Eric Hutchinson
Everything Feels Wrong by Bree Sharp
Unbroken by Missy Higgins
Stupid for You by Marie Digby
It Hasn’t Been Long Enough by Eric Hutchinson
Fairytale by Sara Bareilles

I’m still looking for some more songs, especially for the two love interests. I have a hero with a semi-tortured past who’s very well-read and tends to be on the thoughtful, quiet side, and a really tortured competing love interest from the south who’s more likely to hop into a brawl and knock out a few teeth. Suggestions?

Oh, also, if anyone is interested in taking a Wonkshop, I teach both Discovery and Revision and might open up some new sessions if there’s enough interest. Let me know if you’d like to be in either one, and I’ll get you on my mailing list so you’ll be the first to know if I open them up!

And then today, Sweetness gets off the bus with this plastic ziploc bag. Inside it is a school paper, and something wrapped in wad of Kleenex. I ask her what it is, and she turns to me, barely able to contain her glee, and says, “Do you know what an owl pellet is?”

Now, I have my suspicions, but I don’t want to voice them as, “Owl shit,” because that would be crass, and also she’d repeat it in class, so I rephrase and say, “Owl poop?”

“Nope,” she says.

I slow down as we walk down our long driveway, dried leaves crunching under our feet as I say, my voice rising with both hope and doubt, “Owl… food?”

She shakes her head, grinning. “Owl barf!”

“Ew, barf?” says Light.

“Uh huh,” says Sweetness, plainly excited.

My response is a little less enthusiastic. “Eeeugh!”

“Yeah, we got them in school today, and we broke them apart with toothpicks, and mine had a rat skeleton in it!”

“Cool!” says Light.

“I know!” Sweetness says, practically dancing down the driveway. “This one kid in class got frog bones!”

“Eeeugh!” I say again, pointing toward, but not touching, the ziploc. “Is that what’s in that thing?”

She nods and holds up the bag. I can see the outline of something through the Kleenex. I stop walking and turn to her.

“Your teacher sent you home with the bones of a dead rat?”

Sweetness nods.

“She sent you home… with a dead, regurgitated rat?”

I wait for her to say, “October Fools!” or something like that, because surely, that’s the only possible reality here.

“Yep!” Sweetness practically skips up the steps to the front door, and I’m left behind, torn between two responses.

On the one hand, best teacher ever. I mean, come on. Once you get past the innate ick of it all, that’s a really cool thing to do in class. And I guarantee, Sweetness will never forget that lesson. Ever.

On the other hand, eeeugh.

Sweetness turns around and looks at me. “Come on, Mom. I want to show you my rat bones! You can take out the teeth from the jaw!”

“You’re going to open it? In the house?”

Sweetness laughs and rolls her eyes. “God, Mom. Don’t be such a girl about it.”

Now, I love that this is her response. I love that she’s not being “such a girl,” that she’s enjoying the lessons she’s learning, that she doesn’t feel like she has to be all feminine and grossed out by it, that Ms. C is creative with her lessons, and that my kid will never forget that dead, regurgitated rat for the rest of her life.

I should be that cool, I think. Take this as an opportunity for personal growth. Learn a valuable lesson. Live an afterschool special. I should–

Then, a different internal voice steps in and says, Dead, regurgitated rat.

“I’m sorry, I can’t get past it, that’s just disgusting,” I say, stopping just short of a dry heave.

“Geez, Mom.”

“You’re not opening that in the house. Yuck.”

Sweetness laughs, then starts to cough, because it’s that time of year.

“Don’t regurgitate any dead rats,” I say, holding open the front door for her.

“Don’t worry,” she says easily. “I haven’t eaten any.”

Coolest kid ever. Best teacher ever.

But still. Eeeugh!

Okay. Fine. I’m a girl. That’s just disgusting.

But, well, it’s done. So here you go. Writer’s Gut.