Almost DONE....

Thanks to everyone signing up for early publication notification and the Limori stories I will write while you wait for the third book to come out. 

If you want to join us: 

http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2012/03/blog-post.html

It was a wonderful conference full of serious writers. The falls are beautiful and strange and wonderful and deafening!.  I have more pics of them on FB.  
http://www.facebook.com/kathleen.duey/photos_stream
http://www.facebook.com/kathleen.duey

Letters Written to Writer Fans

Hello! I am thrilled that you like my books and I am equally thrilled to know that you want to write books, too. If I tried to explain how to get published ((with lots of details as you have requested)) it would take me a year or two. Really, it would. And I wouldn't be giving you the advice you need now.

So here it is:

Don't worry about how to get published yet. Throw all your energy into writing better. When you can fit it in with schoolwork, write. Every summer, write another book. If you have to get jobs to make money, write at night or early in the morning. Don't use the first ideas that pop into your head. Use the BEST ones. It takes time to get good at writing. It takes a LONG time. Every successful author I know wrote for 10-15 years before they were published. Some started in grade school. I did. Some were in their thirties or older before they could find the time to really get good at it. Some of them graduated from universities with degrees in writing and literature. Others found different ways to learn.

Each book you write will teach your something. It will be better than the one before it. Check out 100 books about writing from the library (not all at once, of course) and read them all carefully. I did. Practice making the words sing. Practice making the reader see what you are seeing in your mind. Practice creating characters that are so real the reader will cry when something bad happens...and be overjoyed when something good happens. Don't rush. Just love writing and keep writing.

Pay attention to the world. Listen to people talk. Notice how they pause, when they lower their voices and when they glance away. Notice everything. Feel the rain and hear the sounds in the forests and the cities. Absorb life and keep journals. Pay attention to your own feelings. READ a lot of great books and try to see all the ways the writer made the story work well (or failed to!)

That's it. Truly.

If you want to be published, if you want people to love your books...first, learn to write really, really well. It takes years of effort. I think it's fabulous that you are so young and already working on a book. Even if you decide not to be a professional writer, learning to write will teach you about people,about life. Your books will be treasured by you, by your family, your kids, your friends, even if you don't get published. Writing is a way to hand down what we learn about the world and being human. Writing time is never wasted.

And if you do end up as a professional writer, you will get letters like the one you wrote me...and they will all make you smile. I am delighted that you like my books. I hope someday I get to read yours.

I wish you all good things!

kathleen



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ANOTHER letter to a fan just graduating high school.


So: 


I read it.
It's a mess, yes, but I can feel the sparks. That's GREAT news! You have a long way to go--this is more a duo of two omniscient-voice character sketches than the beginning of a story, and you don't understand character VP and many, many other things...but it is engaging, and I was not bored.


(Let me repeat that. I, who live chest-deep in story soup, was NOT bored) 


I think you might have the story instincts that, with MUCH work, can become the craft...and with more work...the art...of writing. (...perhaps not in that order, it varies) I absolutely encourage you to continue. I think you can learn to write well if you are willing to work at it. I NEVER say that to anyone if I don't believe it and I am not kidding when I say *work*.


From the day you get serious, you are typically facing a 5-10 year intensive learning curve, after which you will continue to learn, usually at a somewhat slower rate. Writing, done well, is difficult, eternally challenging--it never gets easy. (Easier, yes, easy, never). This is why I love it.  My job will never allow me to be on auto-pilot emotionally or intellectually.


Anyone can get "published" now. Things on the business end are changing in almost violent, relentless, fascinating ways. Don't rush anything. First learn to write. If your early work sucks, that's because you are one of us. ALL our early work sucks. Once we actually know how to write, most of our work still sucks in first drafts (and often longer than that.) as we carve the thing out, nail it together.


Go back and forth to your library. Check out and read every single book on writing they have this summer. Some will be stupid. Some will try to sell you on the idiotic idea that there is a template to follow that guarantees success. Some will be so arty-farty that you want to kill the author with a pitch fork....but you will learn something from all of them if you are trying to learn. None of them will paint the whole picture. None of them will fit you perfectly, you will build your own way to write as you go on. But read them all and while you do that, keep writing so you can try things on for size...


And....find a writing/critique group. There might be some in your school, your town. 


Check out http://www.scbwi.org/
They have world wide regional chapters that bring in authors, agents, real editors, etc. I speak at lot of these every year. It has become almost a "guild" structure and I treasure it. So many people helped me, with their presentations and speeches, and with their off hand comments standing in the bathroom line. So many have become good friends. SCBWI will help you form a community of writers to lean on, a vast pool of thoughtful beta-readers. They can help teach you to write well if you are serious about learning--and you will help them, too, if they are serious. The membership and the conferences are not free. That's because they are good. 


I hope this helps, I hope you keep writing. I really did feel the sparks.

Writing updates #8

Dear world, you can buy my books (and almost anyone else's books) here:http://www.bookdepository.com/  They ship free, world wide


Writing updates, short and sometimes odd.
Often with pictures.
NEVER with spoilers.
If you want to go back to the beginning:

http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html

http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/05/writing-updates-all-projects-2.html

http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/06/writing-updates-3-2011.html

http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/07/writing-updates-4.html

http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/07/writing-updates-5.html

http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/09/writing-updates-6.html

http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/09/writing-updates-7.html

Or you can just start here:::

A Resurrection of Magic is a trilogy. Two books are finished: ((see the books))  and I am writing the third one now. In these books there are two voices and two stories that go back and forth, every other chapter. The stories begin  200 years apart and the first one causes the second one...

Yes, I am doing some writing consultations and critiques when I can fit it in. Here's the what and the why:
http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/08/critiques-short-answer-is-yes-if-my-own.html

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1.9.  2012

Two people might be dead. 

I can't find them.

No, they aren't real, but they are--to me. Writing a trilogy is a long, life changing thing sometimes.  These books have dragged me into the dark woods of my own ethical  connundrums. Today's writing  is going to hurt, I think....which is why I am fiddling here, on the blog , instead of writing. By the time anyone reads this, though, I will be back in Limori, walking the paths that connect South End with Ferrin Hill. I intend to stay well below Market Square. I don't want to know if Thomas Marsham had anything to do with this. Not yet anyway. 

This is a Beaucarnea Recurvata with a nearly 200 year old broad leafed vine climbing inside it. I watered the vine too much (or too little) this year and killed it. Every time I think about that, I wince. I should not be trusted with exotics. I should plant beets. I know how Sadima feels this morning.  

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1.13. 2012

Thanks to everyone getting in touch to say they are waiting for the book. It helps me with the hardest thing of all--the first few sentences of the day. I wrote this at about 7:00 am :  

 The paths were less used here. It was quiet. Too quiet. No birdsong, no rustling in the deep carpet of pine needles. Everything seemed wrong. Her hopes felt too big for her body. Her fears were sharp and close. 

Then I wrote seven more pages. I also played in my little late-season garden and made a compost heap and trimmed the bougainvillea in the back yard. A lovely day.  Thank you all. 

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1.19.2012

There are things I have wondered about since the beginning of this trilogy.  The answers are finally emerging and they make perfect sense. People who send their children into the cliffs are not simply seeking a connection with the wizards. It isn't that simple.... how could it be?

     I clicked this picture while traveling because these children (and the dog) were overtired, flushed with heat, crying, (panting) wanting to get out of the crowd.  I overheard the parent on the left lecturing  his daughter, insisting she would remember everything she had seen on their journey. She started kicking and chanting  "No I won't, No I won't" which embarrassed him into setting her down. And then he walked away. He walked slowly, but without looking back. I assumed she would run after him but....she hesitated for so long that I wondered if I should intrude, or at least follow to make sure she found her father. Then the train came and she ran after him and I lost track of them in the crowd.  Her father's need to remind her that he didn't have to take care of her--and her hesitation--made me wonder about a lot of things that have ended up in this trilogy.

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1 . 21 . 2012

 Yesterday's writing was painful for me. Painful but true.  I tend not to plot, not to know what will happen next. I birth characters in order to follow them around and record what happens. And yes, that sounds silly to me, too, but there it is. For me anyway, book-people are real.

This Jacaranda tree came up from a seed about 10 years ago. I noticed it hiding before it was an inch tall, barely rooted in a tiny crack between the driveway and an old railroad-tie planter.

I admired its courage and tenacity, then forgot about it until I realized it was almost a foot tall. I kept thinking I should transplant it, move it, but it was fascinating to watch it shove back the old asphalt bit by bit and, somehow find enough water and light to keep growing.

That's what I am hoping for the people I love in Limori.  Some of them are missing now and no one knows why. Including me. I want them to find light and water, but I know they might not.

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1 . 27 . 2012

6:15 am here in CA USA.

I have a routine. I am usually up by six, and usually start writing about an hour later, after I tend to FB, twitter, this blog, and answer at least a few fan letters then do a critique or work on a presentation or speech, etc.

Today, I woke up with a character explaining something to me. I don't usually hear characters' voices until my hands touch the keys, but this was important. I know where to look for one of the missing people now and even though the city of Limori is dangerous, I am almost sure she is safe. Oh, I hope so, she has helped so many people in South End.

This is a ginger bloom. They are patient and last for months, each layer unfolding so slowly that the changes are impossible to see day to day. They should write novels.

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2. 2. 2012

The updates are getting farther apart. It's getting harder to say anything without giving away the story.    

Limori--the name of the city where people I have come to love are trying to stay alive--is a real gypsy word. It means "graveyard".

The magicians and the magistrates (who almost all come from what were once royal families) are preparing for another war. South End boys are being hired, scrubbed up, given swords, training, and colored tunics. For the first time in their lives, they find themselves standing up straight, looking at the well-dressed Ferrinidies families in Market Square with their chins up, shoulders back. And they glare at each other if their tunics are different colors.

  When they are marched to the many warehouses in South End where they live now, sleeping on cots, eating decent food, they have no idea that they are the twentieth generation to feel this misplaced pride, this same false promise of respect.

And none of this will change unless the people I love most in Limori can somehow ......do the impossible.

This NYC.....but it could be Limori's Market Square, if you could fly over it like the magicians can.  Somiss has changed the Square since you saw it last,adding paths and buildings -- and the trees have grown over time. To the right is Middle Park, the center of the city where Sadima lived almost 200 years ago. Beyond it, out of sight, are the beautiful hills and the scattered, grand old mansions where the Ferrenidies live. South End is the curved, smokey, distant jumble of buildings straight ahead. Beyond it are the docks, the bay and the river that Hahp saw six years ago from the seat of the carriage once the pony had pulled them high into the air. That was the  day his father gave him to the magicians. He almost jumped out of the carriage, knowing the fall would kill him. He wanted to. For a long time, he thought it was cowardice that had held him back, but it wasn't.

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Tomorrow I will get on a train. I love trains and this one will be going through beautiful places, taking me to a writers' event. I have my whole class figured out, I know what I am going to teach, so I will be taking the first 70 chapters of the third book with me, to read and ponder. I am beginning to see the light cast by the ending of the story, but isn't clear to me yet. I will just have to keep writing toward it, staying hidden, being silent and invisible, standing in the shadows, watching , listening, hoping.

The moon, the trees, the wind, and the clouds, all in my back yard.

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pic taken by Roxyanne Young, friend and author   

I spent a day in San Louis Obispo, teaching serious writers that there are no freakin rules. They were kind enough to let me pace the floor, sit on the table, and listen to them read aloud with my eyes closed. I love writers. They notice everything. They are awake..they keep me awake.

On the train up and back (14 glorious hours of train) I reread the first 70 chapters of book #3. The story is telling itself, or so it seemed to me. And now....onward.

PS.  One writer got in touch to thank me for being the only writer she had ever heard say there were no rules who then did NOT provide a sequence of rules to follow. I should probably add that there were no beginners in the room. But even if there had been, I am convinced that craft often overwhelms art and our books are not what they could be because of that.

*a few days later::  I am NOT saying art will bloom if craft is not learned. I am saying that once craft is strong and solid--which can be a long learning curve for many of us--art should probably run the show whenever possible.

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This is the cover art of the first book I ever wrote--

Just a quick note. I am buried in the last book of my trilogy ( A Resurrection of Magic). I just wanted to thank everyone who gets in touch to tell me they are excited about the third book because they loved the first two.

 I can't begin to explain how much this helps any writer...keep writing, write deeper, stay brave, stay honest.          ........Thanks.

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After a few days of straightening out an emotional arc and condensing two chapters in one strand, then adjusting the other strand to fit that change.....I am moving forward again on book three. YAY!  But I am headed toward the scenes that are going to be really painful to write.  Ten boys were marched into the cliffs in the first book. Most of them will not be walking out. Maybe none. I have to write what's real and I never know what that is until I write it. All I can do now is chase the story....

Two crows.  The whole flock --at least a hundred birds---went overhead while I dug my camera out of my backpack.  I barely managed to fit the last two into one frame. They were talking to each other, call and response, like an old church song, like coyotes, like friends.

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Climbing roses.

They take over if you let them. Like books do. I am writing writing writing

Sadima is alone. She has dropped a cooking pot.   We are both listening to its clanging on the stone floor...we are both waiting, holding our breath, hoping no one else has heard it.

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This is weird. I am seeing elaborate set ups in books one and two that I had no idea I had put in...but that totally pave the way for things that are emerging now. Sorry for the vagueness, but you know....

When I finish this trilogy, the research and idea materials will finally be put to bed. On the other side of this pile, in the black file cabinet, there are drawers stuffed with articles, cavers and trapped miners interviews, stacks of notes about the city of Limori, accounts of historical toppled kings, the gypsy dictionaries, the maps I have drawn, etc. (and more etc.)

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3/18/2012

Something about one character has finally come clear to me today. It fits, perfectly, all the way back to the first time I met him in Skin Hunger (Book One)  I just somehow never saw it before. I should have. It obvious.

Below are the keys Sadima once found inside the cliffs. I have put them up here before, a long time ago. I thought they were lost forever to her, to me.... but maybe not.  

(these keys belong to a school principal in Abu Dhabi, who was kind enough to let me stay in her house while I was there appearing at schools.)

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I am rereading chapters 1-70 for continuity and progression--and rewriting some sections as I go. I am also dreaming my way through the last 10-15 chapters, asking the characters what happens and why. Their answers are stunningly different than what I thought before I dropped back to do this read-through. So it's good I gave them time to think....

Sky, Cloud, Sea, and land.... This place looks almost exactly like the coast off  South End, up past the marshes where the Eridian's held their meetings for years until the night of the fire...

And this is in my backyard. Every few years an acorn lodges in a palm trunk and starts to grow. I try to transplant them before they have time to remind me that oaks win most their arguments.

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3.31.2012

Morning update:

Fifty chapters are polished up, dead end stuff taken out, the emotional arcs making sense. All three of my digicorders (each one holds 1,000 entries) are almost full of details to check as I go.  The next 10 chapters have almost no mark-ups from the recent train-ride read-through. The characters are completely running the show now...

This was taken in Fez, Morocco, in the medina, a maze-like ancient city that is now surrounded by the modern city. This is a student's window, a place to study with enough light to read without a lamp most of the day. There are many places in Limori's cliffs that are this old, this interesting. I wonder sometimes if the boys will ever find them. If they don't, I will move them to the next book somehow. They are too amazing to leave unfound.

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4. 11. 2012

 Sadima passed a point of no return late last night.  She can't go back and I can't see any possible way to go forward. I will just have to spot her in Limori today, follow her around, try to keep her from coming apart. She couldn't have stopped what happened. I only hope she can live with it.

In the woods, full-moon-night, trying to see though the trees, trying to understand what the magicians are doing...and why.

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A tiny bit of yesterday's writing: 

“I can hear you breathing,” the boy whispered. “Are you lost?”
“Yes,” I whispered back, and it was the truest thing I had said in a long time. 
“I can show you the way out,” he said quietly. Then, after a hesitation, he said this: “I have to get back to my parents, too.” 
I quieted my breath, trying to think. Parents? Was he real?

  Shhh. Hear that? It's the last of a hard rain rolling down the wet, dark stone. The moon is rising above the forest that separates the magicians' cliffs from the city of Limori.  And Sadima is crying. 
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Publishing. Old, New, Self, Indie

          Traditional  publishing is still undergoing a sea change, a departure from many of the old models. It is a painful, wrenching///exciting, amazing new phase for storytellers and story sellers. The big-6  publishers are downsizing staff and have been for years. They are looking for new ways to be efficient and still create and sell great books. They are experimenting with incredible multimedia projects, and are sizing up the oncoming waves of reading devices and other story-vehicles. They still support great print books while releasing great ebooks. People who work at publishing houses are generally smart, dedicated to their work, and love a good story. They are also innovators who know how to adapt or morph.

          It’s an echo of how itunes wiped the slate and gutted the album format. The big music studios said there would be a gazillion garage bands with 30 fans each. They turned out to be almost right. Even the TV mega talent shows rarely seem to launch careers the way the studios once did. On the other hand, the indie bands are thriving and I love the idea of artists of all kinds finding their audience, mega, big, small, global or local.  Art belongs to everyone.

          For now, at least, the publishers still offer writers what they always offered us: a long, steep learning curve that will eventually qualify some of us for access to incredible editors with critical reading skills and DEEP story experience--as well as informed and energetic marketing staffs.  If a writer can captivate someone who has spent years reading and developing books....it's a good sign that lots of readers will find the work compelling, too. A sign, not a guarantee. There are none. There never have been.

          Almost every career writer I know asks writing-friends to beta-read their raw work. I do.  I often spend time on rewrites before my editors see it. I spent my learning-curve years in writing classes, reading a hundred or more books about writing, studying literature, reading, reading, reading, writing, writing, writing, and going to endless writer's conferences. I took notes while famous authors, incredible editors, artists, and agents shared what they had learned along the way. I still go to conferences. I get to speak now, but when I am not speaking, I am listening and I still take notes. I did all of this and more because no easier way was offered to me—or anyone else. There was no other way to enter into the career I wanted more than anything. I assumed a 5-10 year craft learning curve because that's what we were all told by the writers we listened to.  

          And now we are living in the golden age of self/indie-publishing. It is fascinating to me.  2.7 million indie books were released in 2010. Wow. I just clicked in “self publishing” and there were about 10,200,000 hits. Wow again. It’s an industry.

*(and as of 4 28, 2012....one click brings up about 49,200.000)*

*(and as of  June 5, 2013 it's 174,000,000)*

          A very few indie publishers have done really well. Some of these writers already had traditional careers and preferred to run their own show. Others are very good writers and marketers who came prepared and have worked hard. I admire indie authors.  I want to try indie pub for some of my stranger/odder works next year. I can only applaud the time, energy, and money indie writers have poured into their work.  The people who have done well have earned it!  I am cheering for anyone who has even modest success on their own. I know they are doing ten jobs, all at once. I just want to say this:

          Almost no one expects musicians to get good on an instrument without years of lessons, books, years of practice. There is a similar learning curve for writing. Mine was longer than I thought it would be. Traditional publishing used to give writers a free way to test readiness. I have a pile of rejections. Now writers are told to query agents first. They offer the same readiness test. If you get a positive response to your query, you send the manuscript or part of it and get more feedback, sometimes detailed, sometimes painful. For absolutely no fee at all, agents will let you know where your stand because if they take you on, they will have a stake in your success. Ditto old-school publishers. They put up the money and pay and train the staff that will help you polish the work. Then the pour more money into marketing. They literally invested in your success.

          Indie and self/publishers do not offer that kind of service. It is almost certain that no craft/art/market specialists will be reading your work with that kind of careful, invested  attention. It will get published anyway.  

          Without mentors and teachers and beta readers, learning to write is like deciding to knit, buying yarn and needles, then sitting in your room alone, waving them around and hoping for a sweater.  

          Storytelling is as old as humanity and as common as rainy days. Many people are interested in getting good at it. If you don’t have critique partners, consider finding some.  Take classes, read the kind of books you want to write.  Read books about writing. Your library probably has a stack of them. Ask librarians and independent booksellers what is flying off their shelves. Assume they will have different answers in a few months. Save up for conferences and if they offer critique staff, sign up to have your work evaluated. Take notes. Sift all the comments carefully. It’s your work, shape it. Experiment with guided revisions. Learn. Get good. Then publish any way you want to. There can never be enough good books.  

If you write for kids and YA, consider  http://www.scbwi.org/

Writing updates #7

I am tracking the progress of Book #3 of A Resurrection of Magic. NO spoilers will be posted. I promise.

If you want to go back to the beginning: 

http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html
http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/05/writing-updates-all-projects-2.html
http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/06/writing-updates-3-2011.html
http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/07/writing-updates-4.html
http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/07/writing-updates-5.html
http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/09/writing-updates-6.html

Or you can just start here:::

A Resurrection of Magic is a trilogy. Two books are finished: (( see the books))  and I am writing the third one now. In these books there are two voices and two stories that go back and forth, every other chapter. The stories begin  200 years apart and the first one causes the second one...

9:25:2011

The city of Limori is tense this morning, on the edge of something I can't predict. The magistrates--mostly descendants of the old royal families--are hiring guards and training them to fight.  The merchants--including Hahp's father--see an opportunity to break the stranglehold of the magistrates control, their laws, their fees. The wizards are not what they seem to be.  And the Eridians are learning that their beliefs are based on one girl's fears, and her genius, and her love.

Everything in this picture has a story.  The sugar  bowl was my Aunt Mollie's. The button jar took twenty years to fill.  I bought the bracelet from a beautiful Apache woman on a train in New Mexico.  The lovely blue paperweight is a gift from the fabulous  http://www.bluewillowbookshop.com/  I found the carved deer bone in Colorado when I was ten. I heard my horse's hoof click on it as we scrambled up a bank, caught a glimpse of the shape. So I tethered my horse to a willow tree and slid back down to look. Sadima has found something this morning, something that scares her, and gives her hope. 

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8.27.2010


It's getting harder to make sure there are no spoilers. The book is about 2/3's finished so everything is becoming more tense, tighter, harder to talk about without actually talking about it.  I can tell you this: there will probably be some kind of bloodshed soon. 

Afternoon shadows on my phytolacca dioica. The trunk is nearly six feet wide now.  Every part of this tree is poisonous: leaf, root, bark, flower and seed. It reminds me of Somiss: amazing and deadly. 

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9. 30. 2011
Hahp has done something he didn't think he *could* do. I am wondering if he can live through it. If he can't, everything changes. Writing involves every part of me and I am sitting here crying. I hate the wizards. I understand them--I do. But I hate them.  

If you could fly high enough, the wind sifting through your fingers, your hair tied tight with a thread from the hemline of your robe, Limori would look like this tonight. The bonfires, the torch runners,  the lanterns on the carriages as people try to get out of the city.
Anger and fear.
Fear and anger.


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10: 04: 2011
I have been reading research the past few weeks, mostly about ancient civilizations. I am trying to understand Limori better, how every set of rulers, every war, marks every generation that follows it.   

A colonial graveyard in Boston. Most of the inscriptions are too weathered to read.  There is a much older graveyard near Limori, next to what is now Malek Park--Hahp's father bought the land and couldn't care less about the history that lies in the ground.  Sadima hid three  keys there once, and now has them back. She is trying to remember what doors they open.  She can't remember that she never knew.

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10 10 2011
Late last night, Hahp heard a voice I thought he would never hear.  This is getting so strange. It always feels like the characters lead me along, now it feels like they are dragging me away from what I thought would happen toward reality. Their reality. 

This is  Volubilis, the southernmost Roman city ever built. It's in what is now Morocco.  Stone survives.  I kept thinking that while I was walking around, staring at the remains of baths, barracks, grand homes.  Stone survives. The cliffs outside the city of Limori have held magic and magicians for so long that there is no clear  beginning point of their history.  I thought it had been hundreds of years. Now, I think it might be thousands... 

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This morning two characters will meet ....two people I thought would never meet... I have no idea what I will do if one of them doesn't survive the meeting.  I am afraid to finish the scene. 

This was taken out a train window and the human brain follows the laws of motion to blur what is close and make it easier to see what's in the distance. Staring out train windows is apparently a lot like writing a novel.

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10 23 2011
I woke up with the ending in my head. I have a lot to write to get there, and I am sure it will change as the characters live through it--and it is off in the distance and blurry. But I can see it from here. I can. 

This tree is on Oahu, Hawaii, in a botanical garden filled with odd and amazing trees.  I didn't write down the scientific name...but the common name is "cannonball tree". There was a warning sign, telling people to stand back. So I was respectful and quiet, and  can tell you that the fruits are huge, heavy, smooth and that they smelled--impossibly-- like vomit and a strange, distant, perfume.  As I walked away, one of the fruits fell--on the far side of the tree, nowhere near me, and I had this tiny moment of feeling like it meant something, like the tree was telling me it could have hurt me, but hadn't.  Sadima feels that way this morning. Like she has been warned, but also spared.


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10 30 2011
There is a boy who has been fighting for years just to stay alive. He is hiding, standing in the dark, holding his breath, wishing he'd had the courage to jump into the deep water six years before. He almost wants to be found. He is longing to end the fight, to stop the fear, to put down the double-edged knife of hope.

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11 14 2011
Sadima is in Market Square this morning.  All around her people are scared, close to panic, staring upward...   

 I have no idea what she is going to do--or not do.  She has a reason to live now, though, and that changes everything.

This is me, hiding behind the French edition of book #2. My series title is : A Resurrection of Magic.  Their title for the trilogy is:  The Price of Magic.  We are both right. 


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11.20.2011


I stopped writing last night in the middle of a scene because I wasn't sure how Hahp would react to something. Prisoners who have been kept against their will for years carry their fear and rage in different ways. Hahp has, for most of his time in the cliffs, blamed his father. That's changing and I need to understand why, so I hope he will tell me. I know this much : his feelings, his reasons, aren't simple. They are tangled, barbed. I am not at all sure he will tell me the truth...or if he will talk to me at all.

trees from three continents, now imprisoned in my yard

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In the city of Limori, like anywhere else, the people who have read the history books understand things people who can't read never will. Over almost 200 years, Somiss has stolen, bought, preserved and studied almost all the books the royal families once owned. He will not make the mistakes the ancient wizards made.





This is a little tangle of barbed wire I dug up in the garden. In Colorado,  it was common, a leftover from the range wars. Farmers used it to keep free range cattle out of their corn. The cattlemen cut the wire every chance they got. It was a small, strange war to settle who owned the land that had been stolen from the First Nations--the people who came here from other places many centuries before Spain decided to colonize Mexico, before Englishmen sent their second sons to a new world to make a fortune from slave labor. And all of this happened thousands of years after the incredible building that eventually became the Pantheon was built in what eventually became Rome, Italy. History is always shameful, sometimes glorious, and always still in progress.


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12.25.2011


People who have have impacted each other's lives for over two hundred years are standing in Market Square about 30 paces from each other--and they don't know it. The wind is rising and rain is starting to spatter. The South Enders know it's time to go home, but they can't. They just...can't.  I am  trying to stand close enough to peek over their shoulders so I can see what they see coming from beyond the trees. .

This tree lives in WI.  You can tell it loves the wind--and fears it.

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12 19 2011


I know these entries are getting farther apart. I apologize. I am living in Limori now, barely coming up for food and water.  I am on Chapter 64 and holding my breath because the characters I love best are all in danger. The city is full of anger and blame--almost none of it aimed at the real source the problem. 

The sky, seen through a Giant Bird of Paradise tree, There is a rat's nest on the right, and an empty bloom sheath on the left. I could smell the flowers still, a little, but the rat-stink was much stronger.

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12 28 2011

Today in Limori's South End streets, Sadima  heard a shout behind her. She recognized the voice, but she didn't look back. She didn't walk faster or slower and she didn't try to hide....she just kept walking. Sometimes that's all you can do.  

This is my Euphorbia.  It's a succulent, not a cactus, but the thorns are about 2 inches long and needle sharp.The white sap is milky, caustic, and poisonous. It drips out of even the smallest scratch. The plant was about two feet tall and a foot wide when I freed it from its container and introduced it to real dirt.  It has grown slowly, relentlessly.  It's well over six feet tall and at least six feet wide now.  If I wanted to take it out (I don't, but if I did) it would be almost impossible. It intends to take over the world. How did I not see this coming? 










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