Crazy Days and Old Friends

Our snowy subdivision this morning.

Hang on a sec. I need more coffee for this post.

I've been so busy this last little while. Busy and depressed and hyper-excited and... did I mentioned depressed? Yah, it happens. Depression hits at the oddest times and for the oddest reasons, but the reason I'm feeling down in the dumps is I'm questioning Nanowrimo and my ability to get it done. Can I whine for a sec? IT'S SO BLOODY HARD. I don't mind writing when I'm in the thick of it, the "zone" as Stephen King describes it and I LOVE writing when it's fecking DONE. That's my favourite writing, the done stuff. I don't mind writing short stories, I enjoy blogging, but sitting down to an entire novel just hurts my lazy-assed head. It literally scares the shite out of me. See? There it is on the floor. A big pile of steaming shite. (Oh wait, sorry, that's cat puke.) There. I'm done whining. I'm behind, yes, but I'm not giving up. In fact, I had a satisfactory session this morning and plan to knock off another 1,000 words this afternoon.

Did you know it's snowing here? Like fecking Christmas, it is. I hate mentioning the weather here in Cold Lake, Alberta, because my Mom is coming to visit us in December and she's freaking out about the cold. Note to self: call her and tell her we paid our gas bill so she doesn't need her parka.

I saw on Facebook this morning that Alberta music icon Jann Arden was working on her novel AT THE SAME TIME AS ME. So I sent her a message, saying we're sameys (which means "stalker," no doubt) and then I had the audacity to send her a link to my free book! HAHAHAHAHAHA! I crack myself up, I do.

So today is FREE BOOK DAY! Starting today, and for the four days after, I'm giving away Friday Girls on Amazon. I'm really trying to get it on Amazon's Top 100 Free Books list. Why? Here's my evil strategy:

1. Being on the list attracts attention from PEOPLE I DON'T EVEN KNOW so I can stop annoying my friends. With me so far? I thought you'd like that part... Getting noticed is the hardest part of being an indie writer. Right now poor Weezie is buried under hundreds of thousands of books. Nobody would notice her if they fell over her, and if they don't notice a book, it doesn't matter if it's the next 50 Shades of Purple, nobody will buy it and Weezie will die. *sob* (She told me she wants lots of crustless sandwiches and good church coffee at her wake.)
2. People who read my free book will be so enamoured of my mad writing skillz that they will seek out other books by the same author and they will buy Green Eggs & Weezie, by the thousands, and I will be rich and famous and be able to afford to order pizza three nights a week. 

That's my whole plan. I know. You're thinking genius, right?

So please. Go download my book. You don't need a Kindle. You don't need a credit card. You just need a computer to download the thing. I don't even care if you read it. Oh wait. That's a lie. But I'll start with you downloading it and then I'll pester you for more ... (evil plan part deux).

Here's the links:

In the U.S., go to Amazon.com.

In Canada, go to Amazon.ca.

In the U.K., go to Amazon.co.uk.

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I wonder if Jann Arden downloaded my book yet?

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More about the book. Sorry. I know. You want to punch me in the face right about now. I'd like to thank the following bloggers for mentioning Friday Girls. If you've got time, drop by and say howdy!

William Kendall says he's something of a rogue and a scoundrel but he's always been super nice to me. Plus he really loves cat photos. How bad can he possibly be?

Kristy, over at Ramblings of a Mad Woman, shoots straight from the hip. That's why I love her. I also love her because she says she loves my writing. You know, which never hurts, right?

Sue Harding over at I Refuse To Go Quietly, is a wonderful gal. We have a lot in common, we absolutely do – like we're old and we hate writing sometimes. Only she knits and I have no idea what a freaking purl is. I tried to be witty over on her post. You can be the judge on whether or not I succeeded.

Alex J. Cavanaugh is probably known to most of you – and to most of the planet! He's the bestselling author of three space/science fiction novels and he's probably got the most popular blog on the whole wide web. Lucky me, everyone's favourite ninja gave me a shout-out.

If I've missed anybody, please let me know. And if anyone else wants to post a link, I will be your BFF forever. Y'know, or for a day or two. Depends how much coffee you have ...

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Maybe Jann Arden will want to be my new BFF now. Wouldn't that be great? She lives just down the road from me. We could eat nibs together. And walk our dogs. And wear each other's clothes...

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Today is the Oh, How I Miss You Blogfest in which participants, like me, list the bloggers I miss and list the bloggers I would miss, were they to drop off the face of the planet or be eaten by maggots or accidentally fall in their chipper shredder.

The way things are going in blogland, my list of absentee bloggers could be really long. But I'm going to limit it to three:

Alan W. Davidson
Alan, I miss you... you and your Newfoundland shenanigans and your gentle nature and that fecking ridiculous red fez you sometimes wore. I miss you so much I even miss that stupid fez. I met Alan through #FridayFlash and was wowed by his storytelling skills. He wrote a story about a dog in a Walmart parking lot that I still think about, years later. Please come back to the bloggy world, Alan. It's not the same without you, bud.

Laurita Miller
This seems to be a theme. Laurita – dear, sweet Laurita – has the classiest blog I've ever seen. Calling Shotgun combined her thoughtful, wonderful writing and beautiful photographs. She told stories about The Rock that inspired me so much I just had to visit. And meeting Alan and Laurita was one of the highlights of my entire life. Unfortunately I can't provide a link to Laurita's blog because it's open to invited readers only. But trust me, it was wonderful.

CJ Hodges MacFarlane
CJ introduced me to #FridayFlash, which literally changed my life. For a while there we were hot and heavy, writing back and forth, talking on the phone but, unfortunately, life got in the way and we drifted apart. She doesn't blog anymore either, and that is just a crying shame. I loved her spark, loved her talent, loved her whole big generous personality and I miss her like crazy.

Honestly, I don't want to list bloggers I would miss. Because I would miss all of you. And that's the truth. Y'all make the world a better place and I may not get around to you all the time, because I'm a selfish idiot, but when I do I'm always impressed with what you've done with the place. Keep on keeping on, because you're special, and if you were to stop writing, I would miss you. oxo

To see other bloggers taking part in the blog hop, visit Alex's blog. He's got the list!

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Jann Arden hasn't called yet. Damn!

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Today is also my friend Mark's birthday. Happy birthday, ya old fart! (He's the same age as me. I'm allowed to say that.)

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And one more thing... are ya still there? WAKE UP!!! Geez Louise...

Fellow #FridayFlash writer Janel Gradowski released her second book in The Bartonville Series this week. The Queen of Bad Decisions follows up on Must Love Sandwiches. These books are well-written, smart, funny and FAST. Janel's idea is to give busy people enough of a taste to curb their reading appetite, so each book in the series includes a novelette, two short stories and a few recipes.

The characters in her books all live in an artist's colony and, because Janel's a foodie, she always makes food as important as her lively characters. Happy launch, Janel! I hope you sell books like hotcakes!




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Oh wait! Come back! I lied – I do have one more thing. Recently I won some bling from CBC's Canada Reads promotion and yesterday it arrived! Check out that awesome book bag and three books from Canadian writers. Jealous? You oughta be! Now go download my free book. Go on! Git!

Me and Laura go camping with Sue and antics ensue

Laura Eno will not go camping with me.

I never figured her for some girly-girl but apparently her concept of being one with nature consists of listening to the spindly philodendron on her desk crying for a mercy killing, and scooping piles of dog crap the size of Buicks from her Astroturfed backyard. (I've seen pictures of her dogs – I can't even imagine the turds those sons and daughters of Jezebel must produce.)

Which makes me want to drag her sunless carcass into the great outdoors even more. I bet she hasn't seen the sun since 1973. I bet Xan Marcelles sees more sunlight than Laura does. And he's a goldurned bloodsucking vampire.

Me, I love camping. Am going camping this weekend, as a matter of fact (and so will be internet-free... again....) (Thanks to Babs and Henry LaRue for housesitting  - please don't let your rottweiler eat the couch this time, OK? Beast is the size of a Volkswagen. Why can't people have freaking normal sized dogs?)

I invited Laura to come along but she as refused because she's a big wussy-pants.

She'll be wishing she was fishing (yes I'm a poet) with me, however, because now she's in deep trouble over at I Refuse To Go Quietly. Fellow Friday Flash alumni Sue Harding noticed Laura's camp-phobia and wrote a very, very scary (more poetry) story about me and Mizz Eno going camping together.

Of course I think it's the bees knees (poetry) being the subject of a Sue Harding story. Even though the ending

FREAKS.

ME.

OUT.

You'll have to go see for yourself what that ending is cause I'm not gonna tell you.

Let me just say, my fingernail polish really is pink. Really.

Now. Off to catch some lunkers. Coming, Laura? (Wussy-pants.)

Sue Harding – Letter from a Friend

Oh Sue. You're so much like me it isn't even funny. You and me could form our own Writer's Angst group only we'd have to arm wrestle over who was gonna be club president because we're both equally unsure of our talents as writers.

Say hello to Sue Harding, everyone. Sue, this is everyone.  Just about every one of the four people (!) who read this blog are also card-carrying members of the writer's-angst-society of those who feel the need – deep down in the bowels of their souls – to put words on a page and yet we all berate ourselves with the notion that we don't deserve the title "author." That our work isn't good enough. That we're fooling ourselves if we think otherwise.

Sue is a very talented writer. She needs to know this. She needs some encouragement to pick up that pen again and start writing. And Sue, please don't get mad at me for this – we all need encouragement along the line. Heck, I am extremely needy in this department. I can't even tell you how many people I have kicking me in my frozen white arse on a regular basis to keep writing. I feel like I'm a sled dog and all my writer friends are in the sled with the reins and they're yelling, "MUSH, MUSH, MUSH!" 

Sue's a retired librarian. She's an avid reader and a rabid knitter. She's a wife and a mom to two grown kids who need her now more than ever. She lives somewhere in the U.K. and I imagine her to have a lilting accent that would absolutely charm the bejeebers out of me. She is kind and she is encouraging. She thought she was going to be able to participate in National Novel Writing Month and we were going to be writing buddies but her busy, busy life put a kibosh on her own involvement – still, she managed to send me much appreciated words of encouragement along the way.

Sue is one of my Friday Flash friends, one of the small circle of talented writers I have somehow glommed onto. They're the best people – my friends in every sense of the word. Sue lives so far away that unless I win a lottery it's unlikely I'll ever make it over the pond for a visit. Still, she's on my bucket list of folks I'd like to have tea with. Maybe even a scone with a nice pot of jam and butter. Because if it's a bucket list, who cares about calories?

Dear Cathy:

We’ve known each other for a while now, keeping up with each other’s lives in snippets and snaps, via Twitter and blogs but as we can’t exactly pull up a chair and have a cup of tea and a natter, given the vast geographical distance between us, perhaps a letter will have to do for now!

Just how long have we known each other? It seems like for ever, but in reality it can have only been a couple of years at most. I ‘blame’ that Alan Davidson – I’m pretty certain I first noticed your name whilst I was reading his blog. But perhaps ‘blame’ is a bad choice of word – after all, it was only through reading his work and then being nosey enough to trawl through to yours that I found your blog and came to know a little about you and what makes you tick. Incidentally, the family photo on your blog always makes me smile!

I’ll always remember the first comments you made on my blog, responding to some flash fiction I’d written. What a breath of fresh air and encouragement – I swear I could hear a chuckle in your ‘voice’!

Writing has been an on-going pursuit, right from way back in school. That’s not to say I’ve stayed true to it since then, it sort of comes and goes in cycles. There have been a number of times I’ve grown disillusioned with it and I don’t know how many novels (finished and WIPs) that have been discarded in mad purges over the years when my ‘sensible’ head convinced me that I’d never get published so what was the point!

Well, setting up a blog a few years ago gave me a platform to display my wares, so to speak. However, it was a while before I took the plunge and was brave enough to let anyone actually see what I’d written. Thanks to encouragement from people like Matt Hilton and David Barber (and you, madam!) I began to investigate different online writing groups – and what a diverse bunch I found!

Meanwhile I plugged away with a couple of novel-length pieces, hawking them round various agencies…..but I think I am resigned to never getting anything published, having lived through the process vicariously as other writing buddies had their hopes repeatedly raised and then dashed.

But, hey – life’s too short…!

In fact, at the moment my life is seriously far too busy for the single-minded obsession of writing, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids, but just as the nest emptied and I got used to time and space that hadn’t been there for so long, back come the fledglings, along with their problems and their needs (and their furniture!) and I’m back into Mum-mode.

Even though I’ve now given up my job in the library (and just as well, as far as coping with the family issues are concerned!) my life is still very firmly entrenched in the world of books – though rather more reading them than writing them, for the time being.

So, now, (in between being nurse-maid, cat wrangler, general housekeeper and library-runner for my daughter recovering from major eye surgery, whilst also being counsellor, soundboard and ‘spirit-buoyancy’ mentor to my currently unemployed son) the few treasured moments to myself are often occupied with reading or knitting – or both at the same time! (a multi-tasking action achieved with the discovery of a book-easel!)

My husband laughs as I knit away regardless – he once said I should have needles surgically implanted – but it is a great stress reliever, and I often find myself weaving plots and arguing the merits of proposed characters as I knit1, purl 1, pass slipped stitch over……

Besides, the wonderful David Barber once dubbed me the ‘Knitting Assassin’ as needles and wool occasionally drifted into my stories – it is a moniker I have adopted for my identity on certain forums, and even the title of a sister-blog I set up.

Well, that’s all for now, dear; if I’m quick I can snatch a couple more chapters and another few rows….given the financial recession, if ever I can’t afford the heating bills I can always wrap myself in wool and lose myself in a good book!

Bye for now!

Regards, Sue

You can check out Sue Harding's work in three places on the web:

http://www.irefusetogoquietly.blogspot.com/

http://knittingassassin.blogspot.com/

http://onesmallcogwheel.blogspot.com/