Shocking Revelation!

A M Jenner

Deep breath. Ready?

In the past, A M Jenner has actually been a group of three related authors all pretending to be the same person. That past is over. Some of us are making career changes, and our opportunity for working as closely together as we have been is changing. One of us is a recent college graduate, another is just finishing a long career out in the real world and is coming home to write full time, while the third has recently finished with formal education and is now pursuing a more useful informal path of education.

Rather than deal with the extensive accounting changes that would otherwise be necessary, we have decided to become separate business entities. We have all signed with the Electric Scroll, a wonderful publishing house which has agreed to re-publish our back-list under our proper names, so the credit – and the royalties – will be given where they are due. We'll be editing the books as they're republished; some will have only slight changes, while others are getting massive rewrites. They'll also be publishing our new books as we move forward. They even agreed to put up links to the old, self-published versions of the books until each is republished. Told you they were wonderful!

Natalie Peck

A M Jenner will continue to write her intense romantic suspense novels, while Natalie Peck will receive due applause for her sweet heart-felt romances, and Scott Ashby will be made to claim his wonderful SF and fantasy. And you wondered why we never put author pictures anywhere!

Please take note that we’re not angry at each other, and this isn’t some sort of a terrible break-up. Rather, it’s a changed life situation where three literary artists no longer have the opportunity to work together in the same way they have been. We still intend to proof-read for each other, and work together via email as much as possible. However, our working arrangements have taken a radical change in new directions that are very good for each of us as individuals, while at the same time resulting in a change in how we present ourselves as authors.

All three of us have signed with the Electric Scroll, and have decided that maintaining our separate author pages there will be much easier than asking poor Scott to create and maintain separate web sites for each of us. The web address is www.electric-scroll.com.

Scott Ashby

Our shared website, www.am-jenner.com, will be going away shortly, and this blog will eventually dissolve as well, though all three of us will be contributing to the Electric Scroll's blog from time to time. You'll find us there, writing about things we find interesting, and hopefully things you'll like as well.

We’d like to collectively thank you for being our good friends and loyal readers, and hope that you continue as our friends and readers into the future. Expect the same sort of good writing you’ve enjoyed in the past, and join us in wishing the best to each other as we pursue our writing with a little less help from our friends.

A M Jenner
Scott Ashby
Natalie Peck

Still Breathing

Did you ever have one of those sorts of days when you knew beyond doubt that life was out to get you? Me either. If I did, though, it might resemble the weeks I’ve been living through.

I’m being pulled in a lot of different directions right now, which is making things just as close to impossible to write anything as they can get.

I’ve started a physical fitness program with the help of the Walking for Fun website. I’m virtually walking the Chemin Le Puy trail in France. In the last month I’ve walked almost sixteen miles. I average about half a mile a day, but that’s half a mile more than I was walking before, so it’s a great improvement for me. Mom walks with me at night when it’s late enough for the mosquitoes to have gone to bed.

Dad is still working on healing his decubitus. (That’s a pressure wound, or in the common cant, a bedsore.) Part of the problem is that diabetics heal very, very slowly. What this means for me as his medical coordinator is that he has more people trying to work with him to see it, more appointments that have to be scheduled, and more rides to those appointments arranged. To make matters more complicated, his primary doctor has a problem in her office with getting paperwork processed in a reasonable amount of time, and we are therefore searching for another doctor who can handle all of Dad’s challenges, who takes his insurance, and who is taking new patients.

Mom is getting ready to retire after eighteen years of service to her current employer, and some thirty-six years of full time work throughout her lifetime, most of it as a single mother and primary supporter of the household. It often takes her a while to absorb all of the information that is dished out at high speed in various retirement meetings, and the opportunity to ask questions is often gone before they are thought of. My brain is always looking for the catch, though, and I’m a bit quicker to spot the need to have a particular question asked. I’m not saying that she’s mentally impaired in any way, mind you, just that our brains work differently. She tends to gather all of the facts and absorb them before asking questions, while I come up with questions before I have all the facts in hand. That makes us a good team!

Her pending retirement means I get to go with her to the various meetings and help make arrangements and decisions that will affect her finances for the rest of her life. It also means that a serious effort has to be expended to make her home office ready to work in, which would include filing approximately sixteen boxes of papers.

Last Monday (the 8th), while we were on our way to a retirement meeting (this one with her current employer), we were sitting in the left-most non-turning lane at a stoplight and started to smell smoke. Then we started to see it. It was coming from beneath our car’s hood. The light turned green and we dove across three lanes of traffic and into a parking lot, where we switched off the car immediately. It was smoke, not steam.

We opened the hood. A Hispanic gentlemen dressed in the t-shirt and jeans uniform of the day-laborer who had been waiting at the bus stop came running over to the car and practically pushed us out of the way. He was afraid we were going to open the radiator cap. I told him I knew better than that. He still refused to let me anywhere near the car, but told me that he was a mechanic who had once built the monster truck “Gravedigger”. I disbelieve that claim because a mechanic of the caliber to work on that truck would not be hanging out at a bus stop during regular working hours – he’d be working somewhere, even if he was not still with that race team. Additionally, no mechanic of that caliber would tell me he wanted my glass of ice cubes to pour onto the engine part that was smoking.

I refused to give him the ice, so he took a bottle of water from another man who had come over to the car, and poured it on some part, even though I was yelling at him not to touch our car. Twit.

In the end, we got rid of the volunteer “mechanic”, and managed to get a ride to the meeting (we were on time) and back to Mom’s workplace. My brother-in-law, who is a real mechanic, checked the engine over and we got it to the workshop of the mechanic we pay to work on the car. The air conditioning motor is dead, and it was an electrical almost-fire that caused all the smoke. However, we stopped the fire from bursting into flames when we shut off the car’s engine. The car will take more money to fix it than we are willing to put into it. We’re now borrowing my sister’s car, and working on getting together the money to buy a new-to-us used car that will hopefully last us a good many years.

Remember those sixteen boxes of filing? I spent a goodly chunk of today going through them looking for the title to the car. Found it, too, but not until the end of the day and the very end of the boxes, of course.

All is well, or will soon be well…and in the meantime, I’m still working like mad to get caught up on my homework, redesign my website from scratch, and squeeze out a few hours to work on my writing association’s website and get enough sleep to function each day. Yes, I know…good luck!

Idea Generation

When I was a child my friends and I played outside. I didn’t live in a particularly poor neighborhood, but it also wasn’t a wealthy one. The best “toy” we had was our imagination. We spent a lot of time pretending, and made up adventures based on our favorite television shows. Some of the time we would need more characters than we had “actors” for. In that case, we just interacted with the invisible space they would have taken up if there was a body there, and one or another of us would provide the voices for the invisible characters. Playing cowboys and indians was a lot more fun if you had an entire tribe of warriors at your command.

As I grew up, I continued to interact with invisible characters, giving them voices and personalities. It was a lot of fun. When the adults in my life let me know that having invisible friends was beneath my age level, and that I ought to grow up, I simply stopped inventing and talking to invisible characters in places where people could observe my so-called childish behavior. I would walk home from school rather than taking the bus, because it gave me more time for long conversations with invisible characters. Though walking was slower than the actual bus ride, when you added in the wait for the bus, it only took ten minutes longer for me to get home.

I never lost my imagination, and I continued to polish my skill at inventing and interacting with invisible characters.

As a writer, I simply invent a new set of characters, interact with them, interview them, and discover the most important, exciting, and pivotal moments of their life story. Then I write it down as they tell it to me. Yeah, that’s where my ideas really come from.

~Marie

What is Real?

When we talk about reality, we are usually referring to the three-dimensional physical world that we live in. Anything not a part of that world is declared to be not real, or in other words, fiction. People who like to think they live out their lives only in the “real world” tend to dismiss fiction as being for children and dreamers. I’ve even heard it said that fiction is for people who can’t handle reality.

I submit that reality is for people who can’t handle fiction. An adult who enjoys reading fiction is someone who hasn’t lost their imagination. Too often we see children playing in rich imaginary worlds, and we tell them to grow up. This teaches them to be ashamed of having an imagination, and that imaginary things are only for children.

Adults who are able to hold on to their imagination are people who enjoy reading fiction. For them, the words on the page paint pictures in their mind, and the characters live out their lives in beautiful color. They see the events in the book as though they were watching a movie.

Still, even many adults who enjoy reading fiction have only managed to retain a part of their imagination. I make this statement based on the sheer number of them who ask me where I get my ideas from. Many of them don’t believe me when I tell them I just make stuff up out of my imagination. They persist in wanting to know where my ideas come from.

Where my ideas come from is a story for a different post.

The point here is that the imaginary worlds in books and movies are no less real in the minds of the consumers, the people who read the books and watch the movies. They’re also real in the minds of the writers who make them. It’s less a matter of not knowing the difference between fact and fiction, but more an acknowledgement that reality is comprised of both fact and fiction, and that there’s room enough for writers and readers to enjoy more than one kind of reality.

~Marie

Writer vs. Author

I’ve seen the terms “writer” and “author” used in so many different contexts lately that I started wondering what the difference was between a writer and an author, or whether there was a difference.

Sometimes people draw the line between people who write based on the length of their work. An author creates novel-length works, while a writer works in shorter segments.

Sometimes the line is drawn based on the content. Authors almost always deal in fiction, while non-fiction creators are writers.

Sometimes the differentiation is made based on publication status: a writer is a person who writes, an author has been published. I notice that the people who use this criteria tend to put self-published individuals with the non-published group, because their work hasn’t been approved by a traditional publishing house editorial staff.

I feel the main difference between a writer and an author is their attitude toward the work they do. A writer is someone, anyone, who writes. An author is someone who comes to their writing seriously, purposefully, and professionally. They take the time to learn how to write well. They learn the general rules of writing; they know how to construct a story arc, and they understand characterization, point of view, and the importance of research. They learn the rules of their genre, and follow them unless there’s a compelling reason to break them.

They also learn the rules of grammar. Spelling, punctuation, and proper sentence, paragraph, and chapter construction are vital for a well-written work. Grammar is the scaffolding that holds the story up. A beautiful story, badly told, is as difficult to wade through as beautifully told plotless drivel. I’ve even read badly written stories with no plot – but never for very long.

The good news is that this sort of professionalism can be learned. The rules are there, and there are many blogs and websites dedicated to good grammar, and to teaching the craft of writing. Good writers will take advantage of the free education that is available and produce good writing. They will become the authors of tomorrow.

 

~Marie

Correcting a Fallacy

Today I’d like to talk about ebooks, and specifically their impact on the publishing world. I was just reading my (electronic!) copy of Analog, which is a contradiction in terms in and of itself, if you think about it. There is an article by Don Sakers which begins on page 102, where he writes some about ebooks, then gives reviews of several books which are available in both print and e-formats. Although his article is specifically about SF, it applies to all genres of writing. Mr. Sakers says, “Another consequence of e-books is removing traditional publishers as gatekeepers of content. This has both good and bad implications for SF. On the positive side, much more good SF will be published. The age of the mass market is fading; in a sense, we’re entering the age of the niche. To be sure, some niches are larger than others. There will always be big-name authors – but now, we’ll also have medium-size names, small names, tiny names, microscopic and nano-scale names all equally available to readers.

“The bad news is that the same expansion will result in enormously more bad SF. No one reader has the time to wade through thousands of unsuitable books in search of the one or two that are suitable.”

I’ve seen this argument repeated too often to count. Go back and read that last sentence again. When he’s talking about ebooks removing traditional publishers as gatekeepers, what he actually means is self-publishing of ebooks. Mr. Sakers seems to be discounting the thousands of traditionally published ebooks that are available to the reading public. The debate here is not electronic vs. print books, but traditional vs. self-publishing. His opinion is clear: self-publishing will force readers to wade through thousands of horribly written manuscripts in order to discover the one or two gems that have been written by good (i.e. traditionally published) authors.

No matter who states it, the argument is always drawn on the same lines, there will be thousands of horrible things to wade through in order to find the rare gems. I take exception to the math used by people who parrot this argument.

First, it’s very difficult to tell, before purchase, whether a book is self or traditionally published.

Second, there are many authors who have been traditionally published for many years, who are now self-publishing alongside their traditionally published works. Does the fact they are now self-pubbing suddenly make their work inferior? Of course not.

It is very true that many authors, myself included, would not be published at all if not for the financially feasible options of print-on-demand and e-books. However, it is absolutely not true that there are thousands of bad self-published books to every two or three gems.

I read constantly. I cannot get to sleep at night without reading. I read self-published books. I read traditionally published books. I read long out-of-print books that have been restored and made available as e-books. In 2012 I read 410 works containing well over 45,000 pages. That’s pleasure reading, not the reading I do for school classes, or for other informational purposes. It’s also books, not counting magazines, blogs, and my morning cereal box.

Every once in a while I find a book that’s so badly written, or so badly edited, that I can’t bear to finish it. More often I find a book that has outrageously stupid mistakes in the writing or editing – things that should have been caught by either the writer or one of the many editors. I find this sort of mistake in both traditionally published and self-published books.

By and large, most of the things I read are good enough to finish the book. Many of them are good enough to re-read. Unless I have an atypical experience as a reader, I would say that the ratios presented in Mr. Sakers' article are exactly reversed. Readers of traditional and self-published books have the privilege of enjoying thousands of well-written, well-edited stories, while knowing that they will definitely come across the few horrible pieces, which are both self- and traditionally published.

Sanity is Just Around the Corner

First, let me apologize for missing my post last week. It was a strange week that included many calls to various doctors and many visiting professionals coming into our home, all of which had to be coordinated by me. In addition, my family is facing some interesting financial changes which were in the midst of being investigated. And then we had some relatives who are high up on our favorites list suddenly go from “maybe we might be able to come down on one of these three weekends” to “we’ll be there in about four hours”.

Now the medical things are settling down, the financial decisions are made, and the family had a nice visit and have returned home. It’s time to breathe, and then get back into the “normal” crazy swirl of my life. I’ve got school lessons to catch up on and a blog to write, among other things.

In January I read 9 books, for a total of 1491 pages. I’m still working on making the chairs for my miniature book shop. They’re going rather slowly partly because the embroidery on the seats is painful for my wrist, and partly because the idea of making nine chairs is rather daunting. I think I’m going to finish just the ones for the downstairs, and let my mom finish the ones for the upstairs, since she’s supposed to be doing the upstairs anyway.

I’m doing well in my online classes, and learning a lot. So far I’ve gotten 100% on all my after-lesson quizzes. However, the only thing that actually counts toward my grade is the final exam, and even then, it’s a Pass/Fail class. You either get the certificate or not. Not that grades matter right now anyway, I’m after knowledge rather than grades.

During the last two weeks, I bought something I’ve been wanting for a long time, and finally was able to get: the complete series of MacGyver on DVD. It’s still as good as it has always been, and I’ve been really enjoying revisiting the world where most things can be cured with duct tape and a Swiss Army knife.

 

~Marie

Life and my Chairs

It’s been a crazy week in the Jenner household. It’s been so crazy, in fact, that instead of writing my post on Friday, I’m writing it on Monday to post tomorrow.

First, my father had an appointment with his primary care doctor January 11th. This week we discovered that almost all of the referrals and prescriptions my father’s doctor said she would write for him have not been written. They told me they were waiting on the insurance to approve them, but then, they told his case manager the same thing…and he’s the person that does the approving. He has an urgent need to be seen at a wound clinic, and other somewhat urgent needs, and they are not being met. In fact, there has apparently been no attempt to meet them. I get to spend tomorrow at the doctor’s office staging a one-woman sit-in until they hand me the three prescriptions (one for blood work, two for equipment) that he needs. I will then get to run all over town hand-delivering them. Grrr!

Second, the weather all week has been cold and wet. The wet is good for the desert environment I live in, I know I’ll be drinking all this rain this summer when the temps top 100. On the other hand, cold and damp is not good for my arthritis. I’ve spent a good amount of time holed up with my electric blanket and a good book.

I recently got an email from my library, telling me about free classes I can take online. The library gives me authorization numbers, and I pay nothing. I’ve signed up for classes in InDesign and Dreamweaver, in the hope that I can improve my book interiors and ebooks (with InDesign) and my website (with Dreamweaver). I’m learning a lot, but reading the lecture, doing the follow-along practice, then completing the assignments for both classes takes large chunks out of my week.

I’m still working on edits of The Castle Project and Just a Name. I expect to get Mind Touch back from the readers in about a week, and then I can start on those final edits. I’m also doing research on a new book for the Kwennjurat series, tentatively titled The Queen is in her Counting House.

On the miniature front, I’ve replaced the round chair parts with square ones to give me more surface area for gluing. I’ve also replaced low-temp hot glue with high temp, after actually reading the directions and discovering that low temp is for paper and delicate things, and high temp is for wood and metal. I didn’t realize there was a difference in the glue or its performance; I just thought low temp was a safety measure for the fingers of klutzy people who were tired of wearing hot-glue blisters. I made one chair, painted it, and wove the seat, but when I looked at the finished project, it looked a lot shorter and squattier than I wanted. I measured and did some math and realized that if it were blown up to full size, the seat would be 30” square. That’s really huge. Most chairs of this sort have a seat 18” square. So I cut smaller pieces and made a second one. You can see the difference in the two seats. The soda can is there for scale, not because I’m a sloppy photographer. I’ve got eight more chairs cut, glued, and painted; now I just need to weave the seats and they will be done. Hopefully I’ll get them finished this week.

Chairs and Creaky Joints

As many of you already know, I have osteoarthritis throughout my entire body. This makes a lot of simple things that most people don’t think about into challenges, sometimes monumental challenges. For example, it’s now winter. Yes, I do live in Arizona, and I know that people who live with several feet of snow sneer at the idea of Arizona even calling a season winter. I used to be one of them. I would even wear shorts when we visited my grandparents for Christmas.

However, Arizona does have winter. It does get cold here, even in the desert part. The low deserts have spent the last week with a hard freeze warning. Warning is weatherman speak for “it’s happening now or going to happen”. Even the Phoenix area where I live had a freeze warning. I saw pictures taken not more than an hour’s drive through city traffic, of a volleyball net with icicles hanging from it. I haven’t seen icicles of any size since I moved from Utah.

For most of my life I have preferred cold weather to hot, because you can always put another layer on, but in taking layers off, there are certain guidelines of how much you can take off and still go out in public.

As the arthritis has attacked one joint after another, I’m finding that more of my life is being controlled by the weather. Heat feels good. Cold hurts. Even indoors in a temperature controlled environment, I hurt more on cold days and on cloudy days. When it’s cold outside my joints all ache. Moving anything hurts. Even typing hurts; the arthritis has spent much of the past year moving into my hands and wrists.

That’s the bad news. I don’t share it to evoke pity, only to let you know what is happening in my life. There’s also good news. Ibuprofen is a wonderful drug. On most days, it’s able to chase away enough pain that I can concentrate on what I’m doing. I also have both a cane and a walker I can use on really bad days. Working on my books is something I can usually do even when I don’t feel in top form, though every task demands more time and concentration.

This last week has been difficult, physically, but the weather is slowly improving and I’m really looking forward to those hundred-degree-plus days that will be here soon. From where I sit, the sooner the better.

During this week I started editing The Castle Project, bugged one of my outside editors to finish and return Just a Name, and sent Mind Touch out to beta-readers. I also looked into some methods of being able to update my website more easily, and make it look more spiffy at the same time. The program I use on my writing association's website is very easy to use for updating the site, but I found it very difficult for setting up my own site. I inherited control of the association's already set-up site. A second program which I own but had never even opened was considered, and I signed up for a free class through my library that will teach me to use it. I'm already loving it, so watch for changes on the website as I learn more about how to use the program. It's a six week class, and they won't let me work at my own pace, so those changes are coming, but don't expect them in the next day or so.

Also this week I worked on the chairs for my dollhouse project, but discovered that dowels don’t hold together well when secured by hot glue or by Elmer’s glue. At least, they don’t hold together well enough to stand any sort of strain, such as being held by one leg and painted. I got nine chairs cut out, four chair frames constructed, and watched them crumble apart as I painted them. I’m now devising a plan to make sturdier joints. If the chairs were full-size, I would simply drill holes in the uprights and make the crosspieces have pegs on the ends of them, but that doesn’t work when the entire chair is only two inches tall. I need the chairs to be able to stand enough pressure that I can take thin jute and embroider seats onto the frames, and pretend it is woven wicker. Because they all fell apart there are no pictures, but hopefully I’ll have some pictures of half-completed chairs next week.

~Marie

Bookcases

 Bookcases. Nice, aren’t they? Where else would you put a book? In my home, bookcases are not just a decorative item, they’re put to use. Every bedroom has a bookcase “for personal use”. There are bookcases in the office, the kitchen, the living room, and about 20 bookcases in the library. My official author bio isn’t kidding when it says I live with around 5,000 books. I can’t be more specific than that, because I only have about half of them cataloged. I have a lot of ebooks too, but they don’t take up nearly as much space to store, and are much easier to catalog.

Before I resume the cataloging, though, I need to finish my huge filing project – in between the time I spend on…making more books.

During this week, I released a new short story collection, Bits and Bites. More info on that is over on the “Other Books” tab at the top of the page. I also finally got back to working on my dollhouse project.

What’s my dollhouse project? It began initially with the intention of creating several photo sets which could be rearranged and decorated to make my website a photo interface. The first piece that was going to be made was a book shop with a flat above it. Designs were sketched, the walls constructed, and interior wall treatments begun. Then I realized that what I was building wasn’t going to suit my needs for the website, so that part of the idea was abandoned. However, I was having a lot of fun creating a dollhouse on a small budget, and decided to continue with it, just for fun. The bottom floor is a book store with a small office in the back, and the upper floor is a small flat with a kitchen, sitting room, and two bedrooms. The house is meant to be owned by a middle class person in a small town in rural Europe in the mid 1800’s – so the lack of indoor plumbing is deliberate in this “hundred year old building”.

At this point, I have the book store and office hardwood floor in. The book shop walls have wainscoting and a chair rail beneath a plastered surface, while the office walls are just plastered all the way up.

The next step is furniture. For a book store, that means bookcases. Lots of them. I’ve got four made so far. The picture at the top of the blog is of my book cases. The picture at the bottom is more zoomed out so you can see my computer behind them and get a sense of scale. Each bookcase is 2 1/4” wide, 4” tall, and 1/2” deep. Each of those books has been individually made, painted, and glued into the book case. I think I’m still going to need three more of them for the book shop, but this week I’m working on making chairs.

Dollars to Donuts

We’ve all heard the phrase, but where did it come from, and what, exactly, does it mean? My online friend wry me asked me about the phrase “dollars to donuts”, and I thought I’d share my research with everyone.

In searching (and re-searching) for the answer to wry’s question, I found a wonderfully entertaining and educational website called the Phrase Finder.

There, I learned that the phrase "dollars to donuts" refers to something that is certain. It’s such a sure thing that you would be willing to bet your valuable dollars against your opponent’s worthless donuts, because you are that certain you are going to win the bet and not have to fork over the money.

It’s an old phrase, from the mid-1800’s. Other phrases with the same meaning are “dollars to buttons”, “dollars to cobwebs”, and the (older) English “a pound to a penny”. Apparently the donut version has had the longest staying-power because it’s alliterative. And cute.

This week has still been busy with all the stuff that has to be done after you get out of the hospital. Of course, it was Dad in the hospital, not me, but I get to do all the follow-up stuff for him. I’ve been running all over doing various errands, sitting on the phone on hold making appointments, waiting at the pharmacy for prescriptions and so forth. I also am in charge of setting up his medications for him, and with new prescriptions, I had to take out some of his usual pills and put in the new temporary ones.

The weather in Phoenix has been colder than my body likes, and I’ve been struggling against my arthritis all week, as well. Although I only briefly succumbed to the icky sore throat stuff, I just can’t seem to get warm unless I burrow under my electric blanket. Interestingly, you don’t get much writing done from under an electric blanket.

I had a meeting with the communications director of my writing association, and she taught me “all I need to know” about the association’s web site, where I will be doing the maintenance from here on. It shouldn’t take a lot of time, at least once I get to the point that I don’t have to look up each step and refer to a cheat sheet as I go.

I had a lovely visit with new letterboxing friends Mighty Oaks of Barlow and Hot2Molly who were in town for the Fiesta Bowl and came over to my home to meet me.

Interestingly, I only got a little actual writing done this week, and that was at the store. Mom and I had gone to CVS looking for some stuff we needed for Dad. Y back started hurting very bad while we were there, so I sat down to wait while she finished the shopping. I have been trying for almost two weeks to get a certain conversation written between Bunny and Carrington in my still-unnamed book, and all of a sudden the right words flicked into my head. I carry a small notepad and pen always, for quick jotting of ideas, but it wouldn’t do for writing of dialog. However, I was at CVS. I hobbled over to the stationery department, grabbed a notebook, hobbled back to my seat, and started writing like mad. Five pages later I finished the conversation, and the chapter, just as Mom walked up to retrieve me. We paid for the notebook and were on our way to other destinations.

With luck, next week will be a little better organized, and I’ll have more time for taking care of the website, doing the updates on my website, and actually making progress on my book.

Welcome to the Future!

Today is the first day of a new year. The year behind has closed, and the year ahead awaits, a blank slate to write upon. It can be sort of scary to contemplate a whole year, knowing that every day I will be making choices that affect the contents of the rest of the year. Choices I make in January can mandate what choices will be available to me in November. It's also a lot awesome, knowing I have the power to make those choices!

In December I read 9 books containing 1218 pages. My year-long reading total was 210 books, most of them novels, containing 45,844 pages. I have to say that before this year my only experience with "Victorian Authors" was Charles Dickens. While I had read - or tried to read, some of his works in the past, I hadn't succeeded in finishing any of them and had written of all of the authors of the era as extremely wordy, inordinately fond of long words which have now fallen out of use, and utterly boring and depressing.

This year, thanks to the wonder of ebooks, I've been able to read a goodly chunk of the works of Mark Twain and H. G. Wells. Not all Victorian authors are of the same stamp. I finally understand why Mr. Twain is called a humorist. His observations of the human race and the manner of his sentence construction had me laughing out loud on more than one occasion. I love his fiction; his essays are entertaining, and his travelogues absorbing. I'm very much enjoying Mr. Wells' fiction. His guesses on where technology will take the human race in the future are entertaining. What is amazing is how many of his predictions have come true, and which things have largely not changed, as I look back on his looking forward. I'm not so fond of his political, philosophical, and religious writings (which are sometimes all mixed up in one essay), so I have to admit that I just skimmed them. He does use more words unfamiliar to me (and also unfamiliar to my nook's dictionary) than Mr. Twain does.

I didn't get a lot of work done this week, chiefly because my Dad was in the hospital from December 22-30, and our entire family's routine was disrupted as a result. However, he is home now, we had Christmas last night, and although there'll be a few more medical things for me to coordinate, things will be more or less back to normal.

My public goals for 2013 will keep me very busy this year, which hopefully will keep me out of trouble. I plan to publish seven books of my own. January should see the short story collection Bits and Bites published. I have four short novels planned that will be ebook only, whose titles will be announced later. I expect to publish the suspense novel Just a Name sometime in May, and the fantasy Mind Touch in the fall. I'm working on an updated website for myself.

In addition, I am the newsletter editor for my church congregation, and I might be working on the website for my writing association.

 

~Marie

I Wish You a Merry Christmas

On a Christmas album done by John Denver and the Muppets, there is a song where Kermit sings, “I don’t know if you believe in Christmas, or if you have presents underneath the Christmas tree, but if you believe in love, that will be more than enough for you to come and celebrate with me. (The Christmas Wish, Danny Wheetman)

This is how I feel toward all my friends, both my in-person friends and my “imaginary” internet friends. I don’t care what, if any, religion you pursue, we can all work together to increase the love in the world and make it a better place to live.

This Christmas, my family is enjoying homemade simplicity. Most of our gifts are being concocted in our kitchen. My mom has finally finished our living room murals, and each corner of the room has a tree from a different season. Our winter tree is a pine, because we didn’t want a bare deciduous tree taking a whole corner of the room. We have decorated our pine for Christmas with lights and homemade paper ornaments. And a lot of clear push-pins.

Whatever your religion, wherever you are in the world, and whatever you call your mid-winter (or mid-summer) holiday, carry with you my wishes that you and your family find peace and love in your lives, and that you spread it to others.

~Marie

Day of Gratitude

I am thankful for my family who loves me. I am thankful for a daughter who values education and had the courage to make the difficult and informed decision to go back to school and finish her education. I am thankful that that same daughter values honesty more, and upon realizing that formal education was not for her, decided not to make herself and everyone around her miserable. I am thankful for friends who understand my physical limitations and care about me anyway. I am thankful for my parents who contribute to my career by allowing me to live in their home rent-free.

I am thankful for having a netbook with a long battery life, especially when the power goes out and I have work to do. I am thankful for a car that takes us where we need to go. I am thankful for Shen Hart, who founded Literary+ just when I needed more help with marketing. I am thankful for people who are willing to pitch in and work together to help a single member of the group succeed. There are many peer groups who will drag everyone down to the same level, but very few that will work together to build everyone up. I am thankful for my nook, because it makes it possible for me to read thick books with my increasingly arthritic hands and wrists.

I am thankful to the Lord for giving me a good imagination I can use to write books with, and a talent for using computers that has made the rest of my publishing journey possible.

I am thankful for all of my teachers at Chandler-Gilbert Community College for helping me learn what I needed and for accommodating my increasing special needs as I worked toward graduation. I learned a lot even from the really…shall we say…unique individuals with whom I did not particularly agree. I am thankful to the US government for funding the Pell Grant program, and not restricting it to young poor people, because this is how I funded my education.

~Marie

Resolution Update: November

My goals for this year began as:

• Graduate from college. (Accomplished)
• Write a new manuscript, something I haven't had time to do since I started college. (Accomplished)
• Take a vacation someplace out of Arizona. (Accomplished)
• Hug my daughter every day. (In Progress)
• Learn how to make book trailers and post them to YouTube. (Accomplished!)

As I continue through the year, my evolving list of goals reads:

• Hug my daughter every day. (Still in Progress, with modifications)
• Support my daughter as she takes her turn at college. (Accomplished)
• Finish editing The Siege of Kwennjurat and get it published. (Accomplished)
• Reformat all ebooks so they look better. (Accomplished)

The hugs were temporarily stopped during October, as we realized we were passing the flu back and forth. Now that we're recovered enough to consider ourselves no longer contagious, they have resumed.

Happily, The Siege of Kwennjurat was released on October 24th. Of course, if you read my blog, you already know this, because I've talked about nothing else all month. I've been working in this world for sixteen years, and was rather happy to be done with it at last. During most of that time, I have had a hand drawn and colored map of the Ten Kingdoms hanging above my desk. Even though the book was available for sale slightly before the 24th, I had decided to take the map down on the 24th, as a private celebration of the completion of my work in that world, and a symbol to myself that goals can be accomplished, even when they take a long time to materialize.

On the 22nd, I had a dream. Book ideas often come to me through dreams, and the vivid scenes that are the seed for the novel usually remains largely unchanged through the writing process. In this dream, I saw two people meeting in a shadowy place, and speaking in low tones. I recognized one of them immediately as a character from Kwennjurat. From their conversation, I soon realized that the other person had been mentioned in the books, but didn't have a large role. I had thought the second person was dead. They are not dead. I have left my map up. Research and plotting is already underway. There will, apparently, be a third book in the Kwennjurat Chronicles, even though most of the action in the third book will not be in the Ten Kingdoms. Hang on to your hats, this is going to be an interesting ride!

I have two trailers up on YouTube, and ideas are coming for other video projects including but not limited to book trailers. My video camera had other ideas. It apparently decided it didn't have any further interest in living, so further forays into video are temporarily delayed until I see enough books to replace the video camera -- or find the money someplace else.

I always have more than one book project under construction, and at any given time they're in different stages of being written, edited, and prepared for publication. Right now, I have a romantic novella that hopefully will be out around thanksgiving. It's a Christmas themed story, so if it misses its deadline it will have to wait a full year. Because of its length, I plan to release it in ebook only, and for at least the first several months, it will be in Amazon's lending program, which means Kindle only. The title is A Gigolo for Christmas. Yes, you heard right, A M Jenner is writing a book with the word "gigolo" in the title. You'll have to get the book and read it to see if my standards have actually slipped. I've also got a short story collection that hopefully will be out around the first of the year named Bits and Bites. By the end of next year, I hope to have the suspense novel Just a Name, and the fantasy Mind Touch published as well, so there's lots of good news and new books in the pipeline for my devoted fans -- all ten of you. (That's a joke - I hope I have more than ten fans.)

On the handcrafting front, I hauled out my daughter's knitting looms and started a shawl, but that project got derailed because of the dollhouse project I'm involved in. It began as an idea to make a miniature bookshop to use as a set for photo shoots for my website, but has evolved into simply a project to build a miniature bookshop dollhouse with a flat above the shop. Each of the floors has been constructed. My mom is planning on finishing and furnishing the flat, and I'm working on the bookshop. So far, I have built the stairs to go upstairs with, laid down hardwood flooring, painted, and polished it, painted the walls in the office at the back of the shop, and I'm working on creating the wainscoting for the front of the shop. I'm not going to post any pictures until it's finished, though. I'm making it on a budget in half-scale, which means I get to make the doors and windows and everything else completely by hand, because purchasing dollhouse things in half-scale is beyond my budget. Plus, it's fun to figure out how to create it and make it look good when my construction materials are mostly found items already in my craft supplies.

I only finished reading seven books this month, but my page total is 4367. 

~Marie

The First Tuesday After the first Monday

Next week is Election Day in the United States. (I know I have international readers, but the majority of you live in the US.) Ever wonder why Election Day is the "first Tuesday after the first Monday in November"? Payday for some people used to be the first and fifteenth of the month. For others it was the last day of the month, every Friday, or every other Friday.

If Election Day is on a Tuesday, it can't be on any Friday. If it's the first Tuesday, that keeps it from being on the last day of the month. However, every so often, November 1^st falls on Tuesday. The law was therefore written the "first Tuesday after the first Monday" specifically to keep it from falling on payday, because there were unscrupulous business owners who would withhold their employees' pay if they did not vote for the owner's candidate.

I don't often wax political in public, but I feel there's something which needs to be said. I won't tell you who I plan to vote for, and I won't tell you who to vote for, but I encourage you to vote based on the issues, rather than the popularity of a candidate or because his opponents have said unflattering things about him. Look at each candidate's political record, and vote for the individual you believe will best represent your values.

I believe that every election is a critical crossroad in the course of any political entity. If you don't vote for what you believe in, then those who hold viewpoints which oppose yours will change the course of your city, state, and nation in a direction you don't want it to go.

~Marie

Resolution Update

My goals for this year began as:

• Graduate from college. (Accomplished)
• Write a new manuscript, something I haven't had time to do since I started college. (Accomplished)
• Take a vacation someplace out of Arizona. (Accomplished)
• Hug my daughter every day. (In Progress)
• Learn how to make book trailers and post them to YouTube. (Accomplished!)

As I continue through the year, my evolving list of goals reads:

• Hug my daughter every day.
• Support my daughter as she takes her turn at college. (Accomplished)
• Finish editing The Siege of Kwennjurat and get it published.
• Reformat all ebooks so they look better. (Accomplished)

The hugs continue at an accelerated rate, which is good for both of us.

My daughter has decided that, despite the support, an academic education is not what is right for her, and has left school. We are all happy for her mature decision. While college can be quite useful, it is not for everyone. We're happy that she has realized this, and chosen not to waste any more money, time, and extreme frustration trying to live up to cultural expectations. She is getting a lot of love and support now as she forges her own path in life.

The Siege of Kwennjurat is completely finished, and will be released on October 24th. There's going to be a lot of blog activity this month, with book giveaways and other pre- and post-release activity. I'm so happy to finally have finished this exciting two-volume tale after some sixteen years of combined work on the two books.

Last month I reported success with creating my first-ever video trailer, for Tanella's Flight:

This month, I have doubled my trailers, by adding a new one for The Siege of Kwennjurat. Although they are companion books, the feel of the two trailers is really very different. I think they each fit their book, though.

I finally finished the pair of socks last night. Due to my increasing arthritis in my hands, this will very likely be the last hand-knitting I will ever do. I also finished the quilt. I laid it on the couch to take the picture of it as promised.

I only finished a dozen books this month, but my page total is 5756. They were thicker books than last month.

~Marie

My Life

I'm not sure whether blogging about my goals for the year have made me stick to them any better, but things are definitely happening for me.
My goals for this year began as:

• Graduate from college. (Accomplished)
• Write a new manuscript, something I haven't had time to do since I started college.
• Take a vacation someplace out of Arizona. (Accomplished)
• Hug my daughter every day.
• Learn how to make book trailers and post them to YouTube. (Deferred Indefinitely)

As I continue through the year, my goals now read:

• Write a new manuscript, something I haven't had time to so since I started college.
• Hug my daughter every day.
• Finish editing The Siege of Kwennjurat and get it published.
• Support my daughter as she takes her turn at college.

The new manuscript, Crown of Tears, was started this morning. As I like to write over my outline, the combined word count for the outline and manuscript already exceeds 2,000 words. My office is hung with ten maps for Crown of Tears, and one for The Siege of Kwennjurat. My daughter says it looks like a copy of "National Geographic" blew up. She wants to edge all my maps with yellow.

The daily hugs have gone a long way to defusing tension between my teen daughter and myself. I'm about two-thirds of the way through The Siege of Kwennjurat, and still plan to release it this fall. 

My sweet daughter starts school in about three weeks. We're going shopping for textbooks and school supplies next week.

I'm 3/4 of the way through knitting a pair of socks. My arthritis is now moving into my hands and wrists, making it more difficult for me to write and do my handcrafting. This is a very sad thing for me. I've ordered dictation software to handle the writing challenge, but I'm still looking for an app that will create hand-knit items for me. I don't think I'm going to find one. In July I read 25 books, for 4696 pages. In May 2011 I started the complete works of Mark Twain, which is about 6,500 pages and includes his essays and letters as well as all of his works of fiction. I just passed the 5,000 page mark, and am getting excited about finishing up. It's been a fascinating ride, and I now understand why people say the man is so funny.

~Marie

June Resolution Update

Welcome to June! In Arizona June means triple digit temperatures, excessive heat warnings,and generally high pressure. The humidity is still low enough to be comfortable, and this year the hurricane season hasn't really ramped up yet (though it has started), so my back is loving the weather and I'm starting to feel a lot better. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, what's the connection between hurricane season and weather in an inland state like Arizona? Pacific hurricanes, and some Gulf ones that strike Mexico, pour humidity into Arizona, so they do affect our weather. More importantly to me on a personal level, the arthritis in my back is so well developed that I'm affected by strong hurricanes up to a thousand miles from Phoenix, as well as really strong winter storms clear up in northern Idaho. So a quiet start to hurricane season means less pain for me, more energy, and a lot more productivity.

My resolutions for this year are to:

• Graduate from college.
• Write a new manuscript, something I haven't had time to do since I started college.
• Take a vacation someplace out of Arizona.
• Hug my daughter every day.
• Learn how to make book trailers and post them to YouTube.

How am I doing?

I graduated! May 11 was the commencement ceremony, and I'd show off my pictures of my cap and gown with the yellow Phi Theta Kappa stole and tassel and the blue cord of highest distinction, except that those pictures all show my face, and I have a thing about putting my face on the Internet. May 15 I got an email from the college saying they'd checked my grades (all A's!), and all of my requirements were met, and my degree was posted. I can now put the letters AGS after my name. They also said they'd be mailing the paper diplomas out "starting in the first week of June", so I expect to get it soon so I can frame it and hang it on the wall of my office.

The new-manuscript writing is still scheduled for November, but I've been toying with the idea of also doing Camp NaNoWriMo in August. If a plot idea strikes me. Or a character starts bugging me. Right now the only characters bugging me are in things in editing stages. The Moms Place is still on schedule to be published by the end of June, and I'm also working on The Siege of Kwennjurat, hoping to get it finished and published sometime this fall.

We're getting excited about the trip to southern California at the end of this month and sneaking into the first part of July. (If my resolution blog post is a little late or early next month, it's because I'm crossing off resolutions.)

The daily hugging is doing wonders for relationships and attitudes.

And the book trailer project has been officially put off until next year. I have too many other things going on right now to work on that.

In other news, Anne has a new desk in her office, and we're working on reclaiming the room from the boxes and boxes of "to-be-filed" stuff. Filing has become my summer project, and I'm making good progress on it. I'm still working on the manually striped socks, and have got the first one past the heel, and am working toward the toe. I'm only making slow progress on the socks because I'm pretty tired out every evening. The being tired is from working hard to get myself to the point where I can walk around Disneyland without slowing Anne and Jenna down. Although I will be taking my walker to Disneyland with me, for a while I thought I'd be taking my wheelchair. Friday I was set out from the house to do errands. (I had to go to the bank, the library, the Wal-Mart supercenter for computer parts, Barnes & Noble, the hair salon, and the Wal-Mart neighborhood store for milk on the way home.) The best part of my day is that I didn't use my chair or my walker, and, for the first time in I don't remember how long, I was able to complete all my errands before running out of energy and giving up halfway through. I know that sounds pretty pathetic, but for me it was a major triumph. In May I read 30 books with a total of 4441 pages.

~Marie

Pomp and Circumstance

On Friday, I will graduate from college. This represents to me both the culmination of two years of hard work and determination, and the fulfillment of a life-long dream.

In high school, my plan was to graduate and go directly on to college. It took a year after graduation before I was finally able to get to college. Three semesters later I was out of money, nowhere near graduation, and had a large student loan. I had to quit school and go to work.

I worked at many jobs, got married and divorced, and have the single most wonderful child in the world to show for it. Through it all, the goal of someday going back to school and graduating was always in the back of my mind and near the center of my heart. I resolved to never stop learning.

I moved in with my parents when arthritis forced me to stop working. At about the same time, my daughter’s school situation threw me into homeschooling. Once my daughter completed all the requirements of high school and eyed the local community college, it occurred to me that I had the time to go back to school, if I could get the money.

I enrolled in the community college and applied for a grant. The grant came through and I threw myself into my classes. Of the classes I’ve completed, I have only one B in a long string of A’s. I have a reasonable expectation of getting an A in all four of the classes I’m completing this week. I’ve been on the President’s Honor List every semester. I was inducted into Phi Theta Kappa last October. College has been a strain on my health. I started school walking across campus and carrying my books in a backpack. I now use a walker to move both me and my books. I shuffle across campus, and I have to nap between classes. Some of my classes were to improve my writing, some were to help with the business side of writing, and the rest were simply requirements for the degree.

On Friday, I will graduate from college. I will be the proud owner of a freshly-inked Associate of General Studies degree. I will hobble across the platform with my walker. Over my black cap and gown, I will be wearing my gold Phi Theta Kappa stole, and the blue cord indicating I’m graduating with highest honors. As I write this post, I still have three finals to take and the grades have yet to be awarded, but I’m doing well enough in the classes that they’ll let me graduate before the finals have been scored and the grades awarded.

I know this long post isn’t the usual thing you see on this blog, but I wanted to share a little about where I came from so you can understand why I’m so enthused and how proud and excited I am of my accomplishment.

A lot of people have asked me what I’ll be doing after I graduate. They expect me to say I am going to go on to a University to pursue a bachelor’s degree. I always surprise them by saying I will be working very hard on my books. I hope to have The Mom’s Place out by the end of June, and with any luck, the long-awaited The Siege of Kwennjurat will be finished by the end of October.

~Marie