Foreign Service Fridays: What Tragedy Teaches Us

Today's post is in honor of the victims of the fire in Doha on Monday, and their families.

Things I Love Thursdays: Gifts for Bookworms

I'm a big fan of books (duh) and anything with books ON it. You might recall that fabulous Hermes wallpaper I posted about a while ago. I have an awesome J. Crew cardigan with books on it. And these socks from Modcloth are so freaking adorable I may have to have them.

This painting from ContemporaryEarthArt would be a great stand-in until I finally get those floor-to-ceiling bookshelves I've always dreamed of...

And how beautiful is this necklace from PaperMemoirs?

I find this children's tee shirt from funkycottonshirts particularly amusing...

And this one from BookFiend perfect for moi...

This tote from theboldbanana may not have a book on it, but it's ideal for carrying them!

And finally, I'm in love with this Kindle cover from chicklitdesigns.

Hopefully this will give you some ideas the next time you need to buy a gift for a reader or a writer. Or (why not?!) for yourself!

Writing Wednesdays: Raising the Stakes

I just finished the third amazing fantasy/paranormal YA novel in a row (Daughter of Smoke and Bone, The Scorpio Races, Before I Fall), and it got me thinking: what do all these novels, which are all completely different from each other (we're talking chimeras and guardian angels, flesh-eating water horses, and a girl reliving the last day of her life over and over), have in common?

Well, for one thing, they're all completely engrossing. They all kept me up at night and were finished within a week (which is fast for me these days). And despite their differences, the reason they were so unputdownable is because, in addition to the beautiful world building and unique voices in all three books, the stakes were impossibly high. I think that's what I love so much about fantasy and paranormal: you can have life and death stakes that don't seem forced. You can put your characters in situations that simply aren't possible in the real world. It isn't hard to build tension when your character is facing losing her home, her family, and possibly her life in one fell swoop (The Scorpio Races), or when your character's eternal soul is at stake (or she thinks it is - Before I Fall).

Rose Leslie, my pick for Puck in the film version of The Scorpio Races.

Of course, building tension WELL and sustaining it throughout a novel requires a great deal of skill no matter what your plot is. That's something I learned with my last novel, which has life and death stakes but still wasn't exciting enough in the first couple of drafts. And one of the things that upped the tension was adding more of the paranormal elements. I think this is all part of why I don't enjoy contemporary YA nearly as much. I don't want to read about lives as average as mine. I read (and write) to escape reality and experience something new. All three of these novels inspire me to be a better writer, to up the tension in my own novels, and to be brave enough to try something no one has tried before.

Mommy Mondays: Memorial Day

This weekend has been extra special for me, because my husband (who most of you probably know was a Marine up until a few months ago) decided to forgo a training weekend in California to spend time with Jack and me. It seems particularly poignant that it's Memorial Day weekend. John and I were very lucky that he served for ten years and stayed safe (ejection not withstanding), but I am so grateful to those servicemen and women who made the ultimate sacrifice. I found the following quote particularly poignant and moving.

These heroes are dead.  They died for liberty - they died for us.  They are at rest.  They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines.  They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each in the windowless Place of Rest.  Earth may run red with other wars - they are at peace.  In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death.  I have one sentiment for soldiers living and dead:  cheers for the living; tears for the dead.  ~Robert G. Ingersoll

I hope all of our military friends have a wonderful, well-deserved weekend with their families.

Foreign Service Fridays: What I'll Miss

Please visit Most Eligible Family for today's post. I hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!

Things I Love Thursdays: Alex Clare's "Too Close" and PB&K Oatmeal

There are two things I love today. First, Alex Clare's song, "Too Close," is awesome and you should check it out if you're not familiar with it.

I'm sure the acoustic version of this song is still amazing, but I LOVE the dubstep beat. I've never heard another song like it. Plus there's a samurai sword fight in the video, and really, you can never go wrong with samurais.

Second is my recent oatmeal discovery, which I'm dubbing PB&K Oatmeal (peanut butter and Kimmy, since she inspired this). Here's what you need:

1/2 cup of Quaker Quick oats
1 cup water
1 tbsp peanut butter
1 tbsp cherry jam
1 dollop of heavy cream (optional, but why wouldn't you?)

Cook the oats according to directions (the recipe above is for one serving; one cup of oats serves two, although Jack usually eats his share AND some of mine). Once you've got your oatmeal in your bowl, stir in the spoonful of peanut butter and jelly, then top with the heavy cream. Voila! A delicious, healthy(ish) breakfast that will keep you full for hours. You could probably use any kind of jam, but Jackie loves to pick out the cherries. You don't need any additional sweetener. And according to John, it's better to eat fat with sugar because it cuts the glycemic index (or something). So pour on the heavy cream and enjoy!

Writing Wednesdays: I'm Back! And Why I Really Need An Editor

Hello everyone! I wasn't planning on taking a week off from blogging, but these things happen. Especially when four of the five days of your family vacation are spent strapped into a moving vehicle (two five-hour flights and two five-hour drives. Ugh). The day in between was spent catching up with family and enjoying beautiful Oregon.

The whole fandamily (minus my dad). It was my grandpa's 90th birthday!

My uncle's front yard. The unicorn got away before I could take a pic.

Jack and Grampa.

My uncle lives up the street from a draft horse breeding ranch! Ahhh!

Anywho, this is supposed to be a Writing Wednesday, so I'll just say one last thing. My grandpa is THE oldest Trader Joe's employee! Isn't that cool? I should get free groceries or something, right?

So, why do I really need an editor? Because I have too many ideas right now, and I don't know which way to go. If I had an editor (or an agent!), I could get a professional opinion before I head down what could possibly be the wrong path - again! See, there's the mystery novel that I'm thinking of rewriting as YA, and then there's the Russian book, and of course there are the next two books in the Friday trilogy, and I have another idea for a sci-fi/dystopian that I'd really love to explore too. But are any of them worth pursuing? I don't know! I have all these ideas and not a clue what to do with them.

And that, my friends, is why I really need an editor. Of course, I suppose it could be worse. I could have NO ideas, and then I'd really be screwed. And the good news is that after a tortuous five-hour flight home, my trip ended on a high note. No, not the ear-piercing shrieks Jack let out during the descent, but two requests from agents. Which is *almost* as good as seeing Jack with his great grandpa. But not quite.

Prom Update

I forgot to post the "prom" pictures we took last weekend! Sarah and I attempted to recreate the original:

And as you can see, we were far from successful.

But we sure had fun trying!

Writing Wednesdays: The Trouble With Genres

The trouble with genres is...well, it's just so darn hard to stick to one! With the first novel I tried to query, I knew the book was chick lit, but I certainly didn't want to call it that (this was just as chick lit was starting to be declared dead by publishers - I have seriously bad timing with these things). So I called it commercial women's fiction. But then I was told that there is no such thing as commercial women's fiction - if there's a female protagonist, it's women's fiction. Obviously there's "upmarket" or "literary" or "mystery" or "romance," but my novel didn't really fall into any of those categories. I gave up on that novel pretty quickly and moved on to what I thought would be straight-up women's fiction. Somehow I ended up writing a mystery, albeit one with a commercial voice, and I found myself back in the same place. Several agents said they loved the book, but they didn't know how to sell it. Dammit if I wasn't right back where I started.

I thought for Friday I was set with genre: you've got anything "undead," it's Paranormal, right? But lately, I've been thinking it could definitely be called Urban Fantasy too (or as my friend Erin suggested, "Rural Fantasy" since it's set in Montana). At the moment, I kind of like the idea of avoiding the Paranormal label, because agents seem to be sick of it. For many people, Paranormal automatically means vampires, werewolves, angels, demons or witches, and my book doesn't contain any of those things. I thought that by making up my own mythology, I could avoid the Paranormal curse, but that may not be the case. For my next few queries, I'm going to try going with Urban Fantasy and see if it makes any difference. It's sort of sad that the industry is so hung up on labels, but it's just the nature of the beast, unfortunately.

I also sort of decided some time between last night and this morning that I want to rewrite my last book as YA, since it's contemporary (AND a mystery, of course, but not fantastical at all) and that seems easier to sell at this point in time. Knowing me, I'll miss the boat, AGAIN. But since I can't put all my focus into the Russian book just yet, it seems like something worth trying. At least I know that book will be Urban Fantasy.

You know, one with elements of folklore, horror, romance, and mystery...

Mommy Mondays: The Meaning of Mother's Day

Yesterday, as you know, was Mother's Day. I hope yours was fabulous. Mine was lovely - it started with a card and a carefully rehearsed "Happy Mommy's Day" from Jack, then moved on to brunch at the Four Seasons, and ended with a nice trip to the park as a family. John conceded that the brunch may have been as much a gift for him as it was for me, but it was nice to have the time together, and the fact that he planned ahead enough to secure a babysitter scored him bonus points. Of course, brunch was insanely overpriced (John did his best to make up for it by eating his weight in crab legs, but I couldn't help being horrified every time I saw a family of five walk to their table, knowing most of those kids would probably eat some french toast and a few strips of bacon), John had studying to do for most of the afternoon, and the day culminated in the world's longest tantrum involving the potty seat we purchased for Jackie (more on that later). Only three Mother's Days in, I can't help but wonder if the phrase "it's the thought that counts" may have been coined specifically for the one day a year solely devoted to mothers.

As a kid, Mother's Day for my mom meant breakfast in bed (I recall a tray and a bowl of cheerios...) and my dad taking us to the store to pick out gifts for our poor mom, who had more animal statuettes and bad jewelry than she knew what to do with. In her defense, she held onto my choice of a ceramic cat with a canary feather in its mouth far longer than I would have. I'm sure there were flowers and a card from my dad, and probably some homemade cards from the three of us, but that was the extent of it. After all, women are most often the planners in the household. We buy the presents and organize the parties. On a day where it's up to everyone else to recognize her, there's a good chance reality is going to fall short of what mom truly deserves for all her hard work.

I was getting my hair done the other day and I made the mistake of asking my hair dresser, who is efficient and reasonably priced but kind of a dirtbag, what he was doing for his wife for Mother's Day.

"The thing is, my wife and I are married, but..."

At this point I started having palpitations, thinking he was going to tell me they were separated.

..."she's my wife, not my mother. Why would I do anything for her on Mother's Day?"

That was sort of the end of that conversation. I mean, what could I say, really? And as disgusted as I was at first, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if maybe I had it all wrong - that maybe husbands shouldn't be expected to do anything for their wives for Mother's Day. Maybe we should all be focusing on our moms more. (Or maybe someone needs to declare an official Wife's Day so there's no more confusion, hmmm?)

Of course, John and I live across the country from our moms, and Jack is two (he did come home from preschool with a red heart-shaped box containing a puff of pink tissue containing a bunch of dirt, which I wasn't prepared for and therefore spilled all over the carpet - I assume there was a seed in there somewhere?). And how would we show our mothers how much they mean to us, even if they did live closer? At brunch, the two tables next to ours consisted of middle-aged men, presumably single, and their elderly mothers. They hardly spoke at all (the sons were up getting food most of the time, leaving the poor mothers alone to break my heart with their plates full of mini desserts that they barely touched - although the woman next to me was really living it up with her two cappuccinos). Does a yearly brunch make Mom feel any more appreciated for everything she does on a daily basis? At $100 a person, maybe, but I doubt it.

The truth is, just like any other holiday devoted to recognizing someone, there's only so much you can say and do in a single day. It's the other 364 days a year that really prove what someone means to us (and don't worry, honey - you do an amazing job of making me feel loved and appreciated year-round). I hope my mom knows how much she means to me, even if I may not always be around to show her. It wasn't until I became a mom myself that I could fully appreciate everything she sacrificed for us (and I don't think I'll ever understand how she managed to raise triplets AND maintain her sanity - well, most of it, anyway). Sorry about all the lousy presents, Mom. And just in case it isn't the thought that counts, I'm making it official here and now: I love you so much. Thank you for everything.