etsy fun

A few weeks back I mentioned that Jim went a bit Etsy-mad while anniversary shopping. Well, the results have arrived! Look at this gorgeous sculpture that came all the way from Germany. The face is polyclay, but the way it's incorporated into the driftwood makes it seem carved; and then there's the seashell. Isn't her face so lovely? Some day this needs to be a centerpiece in a faerie-theme curio cabinet, with her face somehow peeking out of ferns. There will be strange seedpods and some brittle dragonfly wings, a bird's nest with tiny eggs inside, bits of horn, a small strange animal skull with antlers, a toadstone, that sort of thing. I just love her. She's staring straight at me as I write.

The others are more whimsical, less beautiful. Here's Rocketbird:
And Pikul:
Thank you, sweetie!

By the way, Blackbringer celebrated its first anniversary on Saturday! A year, it's been out. Funny. Time, she is so slippery. It seems longer, and yet it seems like yesterday. Darling book, happy first year. May you live long in the world. Jim is rereading it right now, which is sweet. He hasn't read Silksinger yet (well, he read the first 60 pages or so months and months ago, but they've changed). I've been holding off letting anyone read it (besides Alexandra, but she forgets stuff right after she reads it, so it's okay) until it's "in shape." And it's coming along. This revision has been, and continues to be, much more massive a job than Blackbringer or Lips Touch. I've rewritten practically every scene, sort of taken the book apart and put it back together, cut a lot of scenes, written a lot of new ones. WHEW.

By the way, I'm thrilled by a few speaking invitations I've received. One is to the University of Washington Writing for Children program, and the other is the Western Washington SCBWI professional series. At the latter, the subject of my talk (in December) will be: "tactics for finishing a novel." Sometimes it feels to me that finishing a novel is not so unlike crawling through the mud on your belly with a knife in your teeth -- you know, like in military training montages you see in movies. It's been a heck of an ordeal for me, learning how to make myself do it, and I'm excited to share my own strategies. I may also talk about strategies for revisions, but that might be too much for one hour. We'll see. Anyway, I'm very excited. A couple of trips up to Seattle in the coming year!

And now. . . back to revisions!