The wind and heat in Southern California have been terrible for days. Many homes lost, many people hurt and it isn't over yet...

We thought we had our usual 6 months to prepare. We were wrong.  Raking heat-smashed weeds this morning while the wind was still and the air wasn't isn't thick with smoke I noticed this..the smaller plants know where to hide. And that will guide my work this morning. Sadima grew up on a farm. She already knew this, and I just needed to be reminded. Back to Limori now....

This is the trunk of a tree that I love.  It came to me when it was a child. It is now 20' tall.  It's blooms are bright and look like butterflies when they fall.  And yes, it is getting a bit part in the day's work today. Doesn't it seem like something that Somiss would want?   Yes. It does. If he is alive. I can't find him yet, but I will. 

Books for young readers:  

Both of these are series.  Both are built on dreams I had in gradeschool. I am putting them up here because I got five fan mails this morning from young readers just discovering these books. ((happy dance))  

SPRING!!  The trees are dancing!!

and the sky.....

I am just getting home from a fabulous writer fest ((scbwi Chicago)) and will be in deep writing mode for a long time....the smaller project is starting to amaze me and the BIG project continues to eat me alive.

This tree would be a poet if it were human. An angry, amazing poet. Since it isn't I have promised it a bit part.....probably in the big book. Or maybe in Russet when I get back to it. Russet is still hiding. A heedless angry tree like this one could save him.

It's springtime here. Which looks a lot like summer and fall . All of my dangerous plants are waking up.....

This one has made several bit-parts in my books. It is about seven feet tall now and fifteen wide. I think it will be perfect for the small story this morning. The little seed pods drop off in full summer, but the spikes just get bigger and bigger...  it is the kind of plant that the Makers are now using in their experiments.

I love graveyards the same way I love sunsets. They both remind me that nothing lasts forever.
This shot was taken in Boston ....but it is now part of Sadima's story.

Ferns...and cycads are waking up now. I always wonder what they are thinking.

The best thing about ferns and cycads is that they look like Aliens.....  and that is all I have to say today.
 (I should be writing.)
( I mean NOW.)

This wall is in Morocco. I stood in front of it for a long time, amazed at the layers, thinking about the history of all the people who had lived inside the building over time. I asked people walking by if they knew how old the building was. No one knew. Most of the them laughed.  Today, Sadima is standing before this wall.  She is scared and waiting.  And so am I.

If you are not a writer and have never done a full book revision, I just wanted you to know that it feels like this......and now I will go back to work. THANKS to everyone waiting for book #3

Image from a collection in Colorado, my home state, a blend of brilliant brains and mixed nuts. 

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My great grand parents. Once in a while I think about them and realize that if either of them had not survived the Civil War....I would never have been born. 

My great grandmother was Cherokee/African. My Irish grandfather fell in love with her. So he fought for the North, lived two years in a  starvation prison in the south....then came home stick-skinny and sad ..... and found her waiting. 

OK it's fake. But it should't be!!!!!

Revision: the painful art of starting over.....

Join me in the scary place writers call  revision.........something I will be teaching writers in a few months. 

Revision is like walking through cactus.... 

in the dark...barefoot and trying to read a map that you no longer trust.......

Or like trying to capture the moon on a windy night with a shaky camera.....knowing that it will never work.

NEVER EVER....

Or like deciding to lean out a window and  take a picture of a beautiful old building even though you know it will never fit anywhere  in the work you are trying to improve and shorten and  see anew....but you do it because you tell yourself that the building will be part of the thing that you will write AFTER the thing you are revising now is finished..and taking pics is WAY easier than actually revising or even thinking about revising....

Or you could try hiding. 

It doesn't work, but you can TRY....
((and I need to get to work on my own revision now))

WIND IN THE TREES : A progress report.

Wind in the trees: My perfect writing weather.....

I am close to sending my agent the first 80 or so pages of The Maker's Cage. I think it is one of the best things I have ever written. It's one of the oddest....

Then I will be back in Limori almost full-time.  And by "almost" I mean I will continue what I am doing now. ..I will only be leaving Limori  when I can't see or hear any of the Limori characters that day..... 

Wind in the trees ::  I can always see their faces.

...but when those days come...
Russett will be the new secondary project.
(I said that very quietly. I don't want to scare him away...

...I would hate to have him think I might betray him. I won't. I have seen the places  he escaped and the scars on his hands.

missing the target, a writer's best friend

I will go to work in a few minutes...this whole post is a warm-up.

I love bad pictures (like all of these)  because I can't always remember where I took them or why or even  what the image IS.

This one might have been a back-bend sky shot taken somewhere at a writer's conference EARLY in the morning when I was running to get to the room before the attendees started to arrive because....I just like to have a little time to try to convince myself that I am qualified to teach writing.

This one is in the Florida
Everglades, I was with a friend after all the teaching and writer talk was done for the day. The funny part is I was trying to get picture of the white bird before it flew away

...trying so hard that I didn't use the zoom lens and ended up with two skies instead.

This one is in Morocco  and I am not sure how I screwed up and blurred the shot but I was looking out over the city from the high ridge that is casting the sunrise shadow before I visited classrooms, then spoke to young teachers.

And  last........... no clue where or what this is, but it's how I imagined the crowds below the Limori cliffs last night. Angry and scared.

and........

This is our dog's answer to thermal precision. She is very picky about her temperature ranges and spends a lot of her time listening to me clicking keys and talking aloud to people no one else can see.... yet.

The Unicorn's Secret and me.

I wrote these books years ago because I wanted to share the amazing dreams I had in 3rd and 4th grade. For almost two years I would get into bed each night, close my eyes and become the girl named Heart. Her adventures, her long journey home, was my journey, too. Every night I was Heart. Every morning I went to sleep in the dream, then immediately woke up in my own bed, with my mother telling me it was time to get ready for school

...I talked about the books on FB the other day and was amazed at how many people still love them, people of all ages who had shared them with their parents, children and grand children. Amazon carries them and any bookstore can get them. Simon & Schuster is the publisher. May all your dreams be amazing!

THE MAKER'S CAGE

This is the first page of the small project:  The BIG project is making good progress now, too.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 I miss my brother.
Levin taught me to read. He taught me everything our father didn’t want us to learn: How to climb the chimney shafts, how to use numbers, how to  and write and where to hide the books. We made a narrow side-shaft that led from Levin’s room up into the library ceiling so we could talk about the girls he hoped would pass their heritage tests and the boys I hoped my father wouldn’t choose for me.
We found a way to get outside the walls.
We sat in the moonlight and stared at the stars as often as we could, and we didn’t die. Then our father sent me here—to the dirty Walled City at the end of the world.  My mother said he wanted to protect me from something I was too young to understand, but I think he lied to her.
 I know he lied to me.
I am not a hearth guest here.
I am a prisoner trapped in a smelly little room.
I haven’t seen the sky since the old woman locked me in.


(next snippet below image)

Tangles....I am always surrounded by tangles 

(about thirty pages later:)   

Then I  heard a man laugh.

I whirled around to run, but I wasn’t quick enough.

The driver clamped his hand around my wrist and pulled me out
into the roadway. He was carrying a sack of blueberries in his free hand. 

"Heritage food,” he whispered, then leaned closer until I could feel his breath on my cheek. "First, Second, and Third Dome people can smell blueberries as far away as most people can smell smoke," he said. "Did you know that?”

I stared at him without speaking and he laughed again.






About 20 more pages into the book: The Makers Cage




I suddenly stopped whispering. 
.....not because I wanted to, but because my lips had closed. 
I tried to open them  and I couldn't. 
But I could hear my father walking away

HUGE THANKS to everyone asking about the third book of the trilogy. I am working on it and two other things (when the big book stalls).  I am sorry for the wait and can't tell you what all the support and kind comments mean to me.

Working!!!

I realized today that it had been FAR too long between updates here. I apologize. I am still working on three things at once!  


Most of that time goes to the BIG book.....((Book 3 of A Resurrection of Magic))  which is actually shrinking at this point. The third book of the trilogy will end up to be about half what the initial draft was and I will end up knowing a hundred gazillion things about the characters and their lives and the city of Limori and its history that you won't ... and you will be glad. I promise. I am WAY too fascinated by tiny things.
(((And I hope to turn some of  the best oddments into short stories...))) 






The second thing is nearing completion and will be off to my agent soon. I love the way it has changed from something odd into something odder still....and far more complicated. While I hold my breath for the agent's response, I will continue to give the big (now shrinking) last book of the trilogy almost all my time.




Russet is the third thing, the twitter novel I began writing SO long ago, then set aside to write the BIG book (that is, I assure you one last time, shrinking now.)




Questions??? Remarks?  Feel free to tell me to hurry it up already. It might help me write faster. Pressure is my friend.  


HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!  May all good things come to you and your families

I realized today that it had been FAR too long between updates here. I apologize. I am still working on three things at once!  Most of that time goes to the BIG book.....((Book 3 of A Resurrection of Magic))  which is actually shrinking at this point. The third book of the trilogy will end up to be about half what the initial draft was and I will end up knowing a hundred gazillion things about the characters and their lives and the city of Limori and its history that you won't ... and you will be glad. I promise. I am WAY too fascinated by tiny things. (((And I hope to turn some of  the best oddments into short stories...)))  The second thing is nearing completion and will be off to my agent soon. I love the way it has changed from something odd into something odder still....and far more complicated. While I hold my breath for the agent's response, I will continue to give the big (now shrinking) last book of the trilogy almost all my time.







Russet is the third thing, the twitter novel I began writing SO long ago, then set aside to write the BIG book (that is, I assure you one last time, shrinking now.)




Questions??? Remarks?  Feel free to tell me to hurry it up already. It might help me write faster. Pressure is my friend.   It really is...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!  May all good things come to you and your families!

I am writing like wind and fire and stardust and it is still taking a long time....thanks to everyone cheering me on. Thanks to everyone wishing I could do this faster, but I can't.  I can only tell you that the re-write of  third book of the trilogy is getting deeper and steeper and ....stranger ....