An update, of all things

Here's the scoop.

Garden, mostly planted, weeds, mas o menos under control.

The second Faeries Promise book is mostly written--another week or so.

Sacred Scars needs a few more hours in response to the final copy edit and it's off to production.

Russet (see post below) is ongoing and absorbing. I usually write fast and furious, but this is totally without a net and I can't explain how great that feels. How real.

Free Rat is stalled, but it won't stay that way. The science is burgeoning. My premise becomes more and more probable.

STAYS is growing into a great book. Should have the first 60 or so pages together by month's end.

The Unicorn short story (currently titled The Third Virgin) is lined up for revision...is all marked up with notes from my amazing editors' astute comments.

What else. Oh, a new thing, at the talking stages with my oldest and dearest friend. We spent a couple hours Monday walking in long circles in my little town, talking into my dinky digicorder, laughing like loons, doing the writers'-speed-flash-concept-brain-party thing. We have a *great* idea.

Back to work.

Twitter...

Twitter is a brilliant little thing.
It was designed to create good in-house communication in corporations. So if there were twenty people on the "gizmo publicity" team, once each hour, they tweeted things like: "revision of proposals finished" and "waiting for printer ink, but the guy says he'll come before lunch" and "meeting yielded better idea. shifting to direct mail efforts, send blurb suggestions" and so on.

People are using it now in various ways--mostly to check in with friends in quick little bursts. If you can imagine my life being interesting enough to follow, please do follow me, I am trying to be interesting. http://twitter.com/kathleenduey
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But I am considering something else. I do not now, nor have I ever "invented" book characters. I have always more or less channeled them. They have to line up, though, because books take a very long time to write. There is one who is way down the list for having a whole book written about him. He is wildly unhappy about this. Since I am always interested in getting myself out of the way of the people I write about, I will see if he would consider surfacing sooner than later--in short little twitter-sized notes.

If it happens, I will announce it here, there, everywhere....and he can tweet instead of me. Trust me, his life is incredibly interesting.
we'll just see....


k

 These are bird of paradise blooms, starting to fade...


I remember the first time I saw one. I was 17, and had hitch-hiked to California from Colorado, where I grew up. I just stood in front of it and tried to square it with any other life form I had ever encountered, and couldn't.

They are as common as roses here. There's a giant variety, too, that blooms white. I have a few. The biggest is 25' tall. The seeds are fringed with an insane orange fuzz...They are African natives, but seem to like California weather well enough.  



I started thinking about them because of this night's work. A boy, raised in confinement, has found a way out. He is starting across the chaparral desert--and will soon see a bank covered with these blooms. And he is going to have to stand in front of them and try to believe that they are real. I hope he can. He is so damaged. So isolated and hurt. This might be the angriest story I have ever written.

teachertube

My friend Katie Davis has a great interview up on her blog, about her new book. Take a look!
In the interview, she mentions teachertube.
Wandering around there, I came across this slide show, basically, of statistics.
Sigh.
I am writing something called Free Rat. Well, I will be writing it as soon as I turn in Sacred Scars and a few other things. And it is about the future the slide show describes, the connectivity implied. I thought I was exaggerating.

Guess not.