Canine Nasal Tumors

I gave this post a no-nonsense title in case anyone out there is googling canine nasal tumors, as I have been, and might find their way here.

These are our doggies. The brown one is Leroy, my step-son. The husky is Shiloh, who I've had for about 11 years. Shiloh has cancer. Last I wrote we didn't know for sure. I took her to the internal medicine specialist tuesday morning, and the vet was a young woman about my age, as are my doctor, my dentist, my optometrist, and our regular veterinarian. Yay, young women docs! Anyway, I wasn't sure if I would proceed with any of the expensive diagnostics, like an MRI, but the vet recommended rhinoscopy, the miraculous little camera up the nose. So I left Shiloh there for the day, which is a hard thing to do! I came back for her later and the vet showed me pictures of the mass in her nasal passage. It isn't pretty. There were two main candidates for what kind of tumor it was: lymphoma or carcinoma, with lymphoma being the cancer o' choice in this case. I guess it responds better to treatment, and goes into remission for longer under radiation. But we got the biopsy results today and it's carcinoma. So now we need to decide whether to do radiation treatment.

As I wrote before, I never thought I would consider something like this, especially for an old dog already at the end of her statistical life span. But what can I say? You never know what you'll consider until the choice actually arises. From what I hear and read, dogs react very well to radiation therapy and don't suffer severe side effects. There's no reason why Shiloh shouldn't do well, and the tumor should go into clinical remission for 8 - 18 months. That's a long time for an old dog. Apparently, there has only been a pet radiation oncologist in Portland for 2 years. Before that, we would have been out of luck. So, we will most likely go ahead with that.

I've been fairly blue about the whole thing, but Shiloh is doing fine right now -- though perhaps drooling more than her fair share -- so I'm okay. She's had a long, happy life, so no matter what happens, this is not a tragedy. But if there's a chance she can have a LONGER happy life. . . well, I suppose we'll try that. And thank you for all the good wishes!

Updated March 7, 2007
I notice through my sitemeter that a lot of people are googling canine nasal tumors, and it makes me very sad to think that there are so many dogs out there suffering what Shiloh suffered. I thought I'd better add an addendum here, to say:

• Shiloh did well with the radiation treatments. Though she was 13 years old, the 18 consecutive days of anaesthesia did not overtax her too much and she didn't have any really obvious discomfort. She continued eating throughout (though she was on prednasone to stimulate her appetite) and going for her daily walks. She did sleep a lot, and she wasn't the happiest dog ever, but she did okay.
  
• the symptoms associated with the tumor did go away -- her difficulty breathing, her sneezing and bloody noses. The radiation seemed effective.
  
• However, sadly, Shiloh was old for a husky, and this year, age hit her hard. It came on so fast. She started having trouble getting up off the floor -- her hind legs were weakening, and this progressed until we made the very very difficult decision to euthanize her in February. I wrote more about that here. We had the vet do a home visit, which I didn't know until very recently was even an option. It was very peaceful, and now when I look back on photos of Shiloh during her last weeks and days, I know it was time. Sadly, it was past time. I miss her so much, but that's part of having pets: knowing we'll have to say goodbye to them.
  
• If I had it to do over again, I think I would still do the radiation. Especially if you are someone with a younger dog. I never knew dogs could get old so fast and there's no way I could have contemplated euthanizing Shiloh back in the fall when she was still pretty spry. Even knowing it now, well, I had those extra months with her. And if she was a younger dog, we might have had a year or several years.
  

I don't know if this will help anyone who is facing the decision that we faced, but I wish you and your dog well. It is a blessing to have the technology available to do something in this situation, but as our vet told us: just because the option exists, you aren't obliged to do it. It is crazy expensive, and as we learned, it might only buy you a few months. It's a very personal decision and a very difficult one. Best wishes to you as you confront it.

[Update October 2007 -- I'm so sad to see how many people really are out there googling canine nasal tumors. I have been very moved by the stories a few of you have shared in the comments section here; I hope your dogs are doing well, as well as may be. We're dealing with severe arthritis now with our other old dog, and that's a rough one too -- but he's still doing pretty good. The last few weeks I've been hearing a number of stories of folks adopting old dogs from the Humane Society and the stories are so sweet and heart-breaking, I would encourage anyone to consider bringing home an oldster -- they're such wonderful pets!]

[Update March 2008 -- Well, we're going through it again. Leroy, our other old dog, was diagnosed with an oral melanoma. Fricking cancer. We were lucky -- he had a tooth absess for the first time in his life, and while removing his teeth the vet discovered the very small mass on the roof of his mouth and was able to remove it. Most oral melanomas are not discovered early, but only when they start to bleed and distort the snout. Still, surgical removal is not enough, in and of itself, especially considering the location of the mass -- since it was on the roof of his mouth they couldn't get good margins. And, oral melanoma is highly metastatic. So, we talked to the same radiation oncologist who treated Shiloh and we learned that the protocol for irradiating melanoma is very different -- even in humans, I guess, melanoma only responds to very high doses of radiation. So, instead of 18 low doses, the treatment for Leroy has been 6 high doses. He's going in for the sixth today.

[Update September 2008 -- Just wanted to update about a couple of things. First, I'm happy to say that five months after radiation, Leroy (the brown dog above) is nearing 15 years and is doing great. He's peppy, eats well, has a great life, so there's a happier radiation story than Shiloh, who didn't live long after her treatment. The other thing I want to say is that we put Leroy on prednasone during his treatments, and we saw a rapid degeneration in him almost at once, a loss of muscle mass, trembling hind legs, having difficulty (for the first time) getting up -- generally, a decline into weakness that was really alarming. We could see his spine; he really changed. With the vet's supervision (though at our insistence) we weaned him off the prednasone, and as soon as he was off, he started to get better, build his muscle back up, and improve in every way. I can't say scientifically that this was because of the prednasone, but here's the thing that really sucks: Shiloh was on prednasone, and these are the same symptoms she suffered that eventually worsened and led to us euthanizing her, her hind legs weakening so much she could barely walk, would collapse when she squatted to pee, that sort of thing. So, I hate to think the prednasone could have been responsible, and that we could have had more good months with her, but I can't help thinking it might be true. The oncology vet never warned us about such severe side effects, so just be aware: in our experience, it is a nasty drug. Use with caution. Wishing all your dogs the best.]

Wonderful blog gals

So, we blogging gals who have met such amazing women here tend to gush about it a bit, and this is going to be one of those posts. After months of blogging, I'm still dazzled by it -- by the possibility of meeting kindred spirits all around the world, and forming the kinds of real friendships that I wouldn't have thought could happen this way. I mean, I used to think blogging was all like MySpace, and having 973 "friends" or something. But this is so far beyond that! Two things over the past week:

Look at the beautiful flowers that came all the way from England (I know the flowers didn't come all that way, but the thoughtfulness did!) as a congratulations for wrapping up my copyedit. Wow! I was so astonished to receive them -- I had NO IDEA who might be sending me flowers. It wasn't Jim; he was as surprised as me. So who could it be? It was sweet Meg, my first blogging friend and my wonderful Sunday Scribblings co-conspirator. Thank you, Meg! As I already told her in an email, it came in the midst of a not-so-great day full of plumbing difficulties and dog incontinence. In fact, when the flower delivery guy came to the door, we were waiting for the plumber, and it was a funny moment because the small neat Asian man pulling up in a Subaru really did NOT look like a plumber at all! Anyway, that all turned out fine, and Jim ended up installing a new sink and toilet, which he is very proud of since we are not, as a rule, all that handy. He could be if he wanted, but like me, he'd rather be painting or writing than plumbing. And as for the dog incontinence, Shiloh was on a big dose of prednazone to help her breathing, and it really really did, in a kind of miraculous way, but it also made her apparently lose all bladder control. Weird. So the vet scaled back the dose. As for her diagnosis, we are seeing a specialist tomorrow, but I don't think we can find out for certain if she has a nasal tumor without doing really expensive diagnostics like an MRI. I have always thought that, no matter how much I love my dogs, I wouldn't consider spending thousands of dollars on cancer treatments. It's a harder decision when you have to listen to your dog struggling for breath. But. . . we'll see.

In much happier news, I also had the pleasure of meeting some blog gals in person last week! Deirdre and her partner Richard had planned a quick trip to Portland, so those of us living nearby (and not so nearby, Jennifer!), got together for sushi and gelato on NE 23rd St, which is a cute little shopping district at the base of the West Hills.

It was a wonderful evening, and I really, really wish we could ALL get together on a regular basis, those of us who made it last week: Alexandra, Liz, Kim, Jennifer, and Deirdre, and all the other gals whose blogs I love and who live all over the place like fistfuls of flung wildflower seeds.

Sunday Scribblings #25 - Pirate Research

Okay, I confess, the Sunday Scribblings prompt was my idea this week. I can tell many scribblers are groaning about it. Research? Feh! Right? Well, it’s barely research. I mean, it’s just a google search! And the reason I wanted to do this prompt is because I’ve done a lot of google searches on various topics for various writing projects recently and it’s FUN. And EASY. And I hope there aren’t any sometime-scribblers out there who are shirking this week’s prompt because they can’t think of a single subject they’re curious about. C’mon people! The world is FASCINATING.

I chose the subject of piracy in the South China Seas. There’s a slim chance it might come into play in my current novel, so I thought I’d look into it.

Pirates have been terrorizing the South China Seas since the time of the Roman Empire. In the lawlessness that followed the fall of the Han dynasty in 220, an institution of piracy formed that would flourish until 1849 when the British Navy finally cracked down on it in order to better control the opium trade.

The great Kwangtung Pirate Federation was at it height composed of 400 junks (those ships with the distinctive fan-shaped sails) and 70,000 men. Within the federation were formerly rival pirate fleets, acting in cooperation. The life of the pirates was a whole subset of society with its own laws and rules. They worshipped sea gods and had their own dialects. Children were encouraged to fight as play, thus honing their skills for their future profession. Gambling was rife, favorite games were fantan, majiang, and quail fighting. They chewed betel nut as a stimulant, which blackened their teeth, and they drank a blue liquor called “bee-chew,” served in small cups. Among the various specialized jobs the pirates had, it was the duty of one to burn incense. They mostly went barefoot. The raping, beating, or marrying of female captives was a capital offense, the execution-style for which was beheading of the pirate, while the female in question was cast overboard with weights attached to her legs. Interesting justice! Most junks could carry between 300 and 500 tons of plunder. The pirates kept food, fresh water, gun powder, and weapons for themselves. For several years, the pirate federation was ruled by a woman, Cheng I Sao, a former prostitute.

The Gulf of Tonkin remains the most active region in the world for piracy.

Okay, that's what I found in a quickie search. May or may not be accurate, but it's interesting!

Kiss Me!

I am so scattered right now. Yesterday was a scramble to make copyediting changes as my editor emailed them to me 50 pages at a time, followed by a mad dash over to FedEx in time to overnight the manuscript to New York. Whew! It felt kind of like a reality show, say, Project Runway, with a ludicrous deadline where you just feel so sorry for the contestants. Here's a snippet off a conversation [honest-to-god almost verbatim] that shows just how sympathetic my editor was to my plight.

Me: I think you're going to give me a heart attack. If I have a heart attack, I won't be able to FedEx you the manuscript.

Editor: That's okay. I'm sure Jim will FedEx it to me.

Me: What?!? Jim will be busy driving me to the hospital!!!

Editor: There must be a FedEx drop-off on the way to the hospital.

hahaha, I kid you not! But that's all done now. WHEW! And the book is actually up on Amazon! Crazy!

I really really want to just drop out of society now and work on the current book. I even looked into the possibility of an off-season beach house rental, just as a fantasy yesterday. To go to the windy foggy beach for a month with Jim and the weary old hounds and have fires going all day and write and write and write. Ah... heaven! But you know what? Once I got started looking at the actual rental houses in our favorite Oregon beach town, I was discouraged. This relates back to my color post. These rental houses have NO COLOR in them anywhere. They're ugly and depressing inside. I don't know if I could live in one for a month, with ugly wood paneling and brown plaid couches and such, even if it IS a block from the beach! We would consider going away to a little cottage in Mexico or something instead, but we don't want to leave our geriatric dogs. Sigh.This is very sad: Shiloh, my husky who I've had for eleven years and who might even sort of like me by now, she has been sneezing blood. I did not know this but dogs get tumors in their nasal passages. This may not be that, I'm telling myself it's allergies, and meanwhile we're going back to the vet again tomorrow. Unfortunately, there is not a blood test for cancer in pets like there is for humans. But I'm hoping for the best. Her cookie appetite is unimpaired, at any rate.

In other unrelated babblings: saw the movie Half Nelson today. Damn good!

Persnickity

["persnickity" : overly particular about trivial details]

I caught myself yesterday in persnickity writing mode and I had to use all my sneaky arts to drag myself out of it. There IS a time for persnickitiness, and I LOVE that time. I love to futz with sentences and I do so with all the delight of a little old lady trying ribbons on her poodle. I just don’t get tired of it and when I get a paragraph just right I want to pick it up and kiss its little wet nose.

I love to futz. I love to “persnick.”

But as I said, there’s a time for it, and that time is AFTER there’s a story to “persnick” with! Not while the document on my computer is a clean and endless white scroll without a living breathing story on it yet. Not when I’m still trying on ideas like new wigs, keeping an open mind and giving them all a chance, every color, every shape. To be too persnickity at this point would be like spending hours styling one wig only to decide the color’s wrong and toss it out the window. What a waste of time!

Oh God, I can see I’m Metaphor Millie today. I get like that. I’ll try to shake off the poodles and wigs!

The thing is, I’m back into Silksinger, my second novel, after the sidetrack of revisions on Blackbringer (though I’m expecting to receive the copyedits today, so... holding my breath!), and it’s glorious to be following a new story along. I love the way a whole world falls open and ideas swarm out, and there are a million choices to make, and serendipities are born between your fingertips and the computer keys and amazing, unexpected things happen and you let them, you follow them like interesting strangers and see what they’ll do, and after a while, they’re not strangers any more but part of your world. And all the while you know that at any point the story could go in a million other directions. And that can be paralyzing, wondering if you’ve chosen the right direction out of millions -- how can you know?

But the thing is, there isn’t one right direction. A novel isn’t a labyrinth with one way out and a dragon waiting to kill you if you turn the wrong way. It’s like a life in miniature, an organic thing that sasses back and screws up and backtracks and tries again. And again. And again. You’ve just got to keep moving, which doesn’t really happen in persnickity mode.

So, to get out of there and into... er... wig-trying-on mode, I have to be stern with myself, and I have to be tricky. Sometimes it’s as simple as opening a new document called something un-overwhelming like “Silksinger temp doc” and writing there where I can hide it from the characters in my REAL draft so they won’t see how much I suck and start to despise me.

And I force myself to free-write. This is something I never want to do, like going to the gym (which I already did today), or painting the new doors (which I have to do later. ARG!). I groan. I panic, a little. I consider a tantrum. I look up something in the dictionary and end up writing twelve exciting new words down in my notebook. I pet the dog with my foot. I dawdle.

But yesterday, I looked at the little clock in the upper corner of my computer and said, free write for ten minutes on this scene. Go! And I went, even though it was naptime and I could have wrangled my way out of it. And ten minutes flew past, and before I knew it, I had written as much as I had in the previous four hours. The panic was gone, and I had remembered that when I free write like this, I don’t actually have to READ what I’ve written after, but usually some little twist in the story will pop up and I’ll follow it and it will turn out to be the one choice out of the millions that seems right for that moment.

Maybe it’s the one idea in the crowd wearing Christmas lights and jumping up and down, and maybe it’s the one in the back, not raising its hand and not making eye contact because it didn’t do the reading and maybe it doesn’t even speak English but that’s okay, because it can sing, baby, it can sing.

Think about this: as a writer, you’re the team captain and there are a million-trillion ideas you can pick for your team, and there are no limits and no rules. That’s pretty cool.

And the story inches onward.

And tomorrow, you try on another wig. And another.

Colorworld

I don't understand why there isn't more color in the world around me. I don't understand why so many cars are silver and white, instead of goldenrod and violet and cobalt and teal, or why the favorite house hues in the US seem to be brown, grey, and beige. Would anyone list those as their favorite colors? I don't THINK so. Then why do houses have to be so colorless, inside and out? I hear people express FEAR of color -- is that it? Fear? I don't get that, really. Can anyone explain?

If I was an organizey kind of person I think I would try to start a movement to create a "Burano" neighborhood here in Portland, Oregon. If you're not familiar with Burano, it's the island in the Venetian lagoon where every house is a vibrant purple, pink, green, yellow, whatever. Many of these are pictures of Burano:

(Incidentally, can you pick out the photo that doesn't belong? Look at that dull middle one. WHY? And those that aren't Burano are either Hundertwasser or Gaudi, two wild colorific architects who if I was fabulously rich and a voodoo priestess I would resurrect to build me a house.) But honestly, I want to live in a more colorful world!

And here's another thing: why don't more people read non-mainstream fiction? Why do you have to be a true-blue fantasy nerd to read books involving the fantastic? Why is there such a stigma to "genre fiction" like fantasy, sci fi, and romance? I like all kinds of books. I recently read The Kite Runner, and a few books in a mystery series set in the British Raj era, and a few young adult fantasy novels, and the amazing Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tides, and Sarah Dunant's The Birth of Venus. There's mainstream literary fiction, period literary fiction, genre fiction and children's books. I love them all. But why do so many readers shun the "non-real"? To me, that's like being afraid of color, so I am honestly wondering. Why not grab a juicy vampire book now and then, or a great YA title? How about magic realism? Is that okay because it's "literary"?

I'm really not trying to sound reverse-snobby. I LIKE brown and grey. I like every color. Just, brown and grey get way more wallspace than they deserve. How about giving pink a chance, or yellow, or aqua? And how about someone who hasn't picked up a YA or a fantasy in a while bringing home a good one next time from the bookstore? Any takers?

P.S. the top photo is a sneak-peek of the color palette of my writing room, which is all done except it doesn't feel "lived in" yet -- there's barely any art on the walls or books on the shelf.

Sunday Scribblings #23 - Fortune Cookie

Considering how long my "Monster" Sunday Scribbling was, I thought a "tiny story" was in order for this one! Thank you sincerely to everyone who read "Goblin Fruit" -- I didn't expect that many people to take the time! Thank you!

Fortune Cookie: a tiny story

She cracked open her cookie and read her fortune. It said, “I beg you, do not eat me. Plant me and water me and a tree will grow whose branches will reach to the cloud kingdoms, where you will be greeted as a daughter.” And because she was so full of noodles and water chestnuts and tea she didn’t want to eat the cookie anyway. She tucked it into her purse and carried it home and planted it in her garden. She watered it and watched it. All around it day by day dahlias bloomed and tomatoes ripened but no tree grew. The summer nights began to shorten and cool but still, no tree grew. She ordered Chinese food one evening and it was delivered in white cartons and she ate it cross-legged in the grass watching the slow drift of orange leaves over the garden, and at length, she cracked open her fortune cookie. Her fortune read, “Don’t believe everything you read.”

More Sunday Scribblings here.

Sunday Scribblings -- Monster

You certainly don't have to twist my arm to get me to write a monster story! I love horror, and when I read Meg's prompt for Sunday Scribblings this week, my thought was WHICH MONSTER to write about?? I settled on goblins, and if you are familiar with Christina Rossetti's marvelous poem "Goblin Market," you have the background for this weird little story about kissing. And yes, I AM aware that my last strange tale ALSO involved kissing and dire consequences. But don't read anything into that. I'm pro-kissing. This is not a cautionary tale. Except: beware of goblins and strange fruit!

"Monster"

There is a certain kind of girl the goblins crave. You could walk across a highschool campus and point. Her, her, NOT her... It’s no mystery. That pretty girl sitting on her boyfriend’s lap? NOT her. The girl WATCHING the pretty girl sitting on her boyfriend’s lap? Yeah. Goner.

The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their dreams become a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood. The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else. Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls.

Like Kizzy.

* * *

[I've taken down the rest of the story; sorry. It's a secret!]

Sunday Scribblings #21 - Inner Life of Pets

Some pets fall in love with you at first sight and would live in your pocket if they could. Others are kind of like mail-order brides. They acknowledge that you’re better than the Humane Society cell they’ve been living in, but that doesn’t mean they want to cuddle. Leroy falls into the first category, Shiloh into the second.

I think, in the past eleven years, that Shiloh has grown to love me, but the current arrangement of sleeping dog bodies tells the tale: Leroy is right next to my feet. And Shiloh? If I lean back in my chair I can see her out the screen door sleeping in the furthest corner of the yard. She likes corners. Her favorite room is whichever one we’re not in. She has a genius for escape. We call her our “downstairs neighbor,” because she NEVER comes upstairs to our bedroom and studio, even though that’s where we usually are, with Leroy sitting as close as caninely possible.

When she was younger she had a very deliberate way of showing her disdain for human company: if you would go sit next to her on the floor to pet her, she would get up and move just far enough away so that you couldn’t reach her, and sit back down. She was lucky to be very beautiful because I always forgave her. I suppose this is how it is for beautiful people, too. They can ignore you and you’ll still pet them and feed them and pick up their... oh, nevermind.

She HAS gotten sweeter in her old age, and seeks out affection in a way she never did when she was young and sleek and spry. But I do sometimes wonder how much she LIKES us, and what kind of life she would rather have had. I think she’d have been miserable as a sled-dog -- she’s such a dainty little wuss -- but maybe if she’d been born to it she would have loved it, the long runs over wide-open frozen terrain? Maybe she would have turned into a thuggy, cool hooligan version of herself. What else? Socialite dog? Show dog? It’s too hard to imagine.

It’s easier to envision the terrible alternatives, the chained-in-the-yard life she could easily have lived, or the cell life, or even the stray life. It makes me shudder to think of all the dogs and cats out there longing for love and attention. And then there’s Shiloh, in her corner, who apparently could care less. Just now as I write this, she came and stood looking at me and I tried coaxing her over for about a minute before she finally turned and went to her corner instead. Now that’s love.

Poetry or Cigars?

Hmmm... which am in the mood for today? How about both? Nah, maybe today I'll stick with fairy tales and whiskey. Ha ha. This is a sign for a bookstore in Manzanita, Oregon, town of our future beach house (that is, if you and twelve million other people buy my book next year!) Alexandra and I went out there recently to prove that it IS possible to get a sunburn at the Oregon coast! We weren't all bathing-suity or anything, heavens forfend. This WAS the Oregon coast, after all. There were sweatshirts involved, and a little bit of huddling near the dunes, keeping below the wind, but there were also capri pants, and lying on my stomach to read, and then... there were bright red calves. Ouch! It's been a LONG time since I had a sunburn, and that last one, in Turkey six years ago, was incurred for the same reason as this one: the wind can fool you. It didn't feel hot!

I used to be a sun-worshipper. I spent many summers very, very tan. But some time in my mid-20s I started to finally believe the sun could be... bad. This was long before my husband had melanoma. That just sealed the deal. I will never ever be tan again. When I see tan people now I want to lecture them. Tans make you look old and they kill you! It's like listening to the dentist when she tells you to floss: she knows things you don't know, has seen things you don't want to see, especially in your own mouth, ever. Same with the dermatologist. Dermatologists pretty much believe tanning beds should be illegal. They're the cigarettes of the dermatology world. THEY CAUSE CANCER. Don't go to them! Jim's dermatologist also said that the sun is pretty much 100% responsible for aging the skin, and that he's seen plenty of old ladies whose skin on their tushies is smooth as baby skin, from never being exposed. Can white please be the new bronze?

This isn't at all what I planned to write about. All I meant to say was, I'm still here. I've been in revision-hibernation, but that is done now. My book is in copyediting! Halleluja! (I am curious to see what kind of changes will come back to me after this last "last" pass.) Also, I am having some technical difficulties. My desktop computer, the one with internet access (I keep my laptop carefully free of the distraction of the internet; it is a dedicated writing computer) is in the shop, so I'm sort of off my blogging game. But I miss everybody and I'm trying to keep up.

P.S. Stay out of the sun!

Slugged by an octopus, but not really

Mmm, corndogs. VEGGIE corndogs. (I [heart] Trader Joe's.) Aren't they cute? And that green dish? I got a set of four in an antique store at the coast last month. Lime green has taken me over in the past few years, so much so that I buy lime-green furniture now, and of course, clothes. And jewelry. We've thought of painting the bathroom lime green, and maybe we will.

News about my writing room: it's finished! Yay! Sort of. Awesome-carpenter-Dave has finished everything, down to the ultra-cool bookcase he made me with a Moroccan arch on the top, new screen doors, and the new threshold for the french doors that makes everything seem so new and lovely. (Thank you, Dave!) But now I have to paint those things, and then, NEST. I can't wait to nest! I got an antique Javanese porch pillar I want to put in there somewhere with some lanterns hanging from it, and I want to paint a big painting for the wall... but right now I'm busy with a) new Laini's Ladies, and b) the second round of revisions for Blackbringer. I was a little stunned when I got the manuscript back from my editor, expecting, well, a copyedit, I guess. But there were fairly substantial editorial comments and it was a LITTLE bit like getting hit over the head with an octopus. An octopus? Sure, you know: it didn't really HURT, but it kind of stank. But the shock wore off and I realized the comments were good and thoughtful and the result of the kind of close reading only editors do, and so I'm okay now. (I might occasionally stick my tongue out at the manuscript while I am working, but there's no one there to see.)

So I'd better get back to that. I'll leave you with one of my new garden Laini's Ladies, which won't be available until next year:

"I sit on my muse"

Get it? My muse is my tush. heh heh. That quote is ripped off from Candie Moonshower, who Alexandra also mentioned in her post about the SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers & lllustrators) conference she and Jim and I went to in Los Angeles last week. That conference means A LOT to me, as I really don't think I would/could have written my book without it, much less found a publisher. (I wrote more about that here.) The SCBWI has created something really marvelous, a kind of paved and illuminated path to publication. Maybe not everyone will make it to the end of that path, but it's not because the path isn't there. It's there - IT'S THERE - and that is a revelation in itself.

This was my fourth year attending, and each year I have left supercharged with inspiration and with the knowledge that PEOPLE WRITE BOOKS THAT GET PUBLISHED. ALL THE TIME. And there are always other little secrets I leave with, words of wisdom or mysteries demystified. This year I will remember as the "Write the damn book" year, because that was the undercurrent in what many of the speakers said. In fact, it was exactly what Jane Yolen said in the closing keynote speech. "Write the damn book," she said again and again, and since she has written over 280 of them, one might assume she knows something about it. Could it really be that simple?

It is, after all, about sitting down and writing, isn't it? Where does all the baggage and terror come from? How does a writer keep that sense of play and that joy, when the story is straining forward like a racehorse at the gates, just wanting to do what it was born to do? And that magical tingle of "what happens next?" Aren't those the most thrilling words in the world? "What happens next?" Questions like "Are you published?" and "Do you have an agent?" just pale in comparison! It's about the story! It's about making stuff up! It's about creating characters you wish you could BE for a while, then making them learn things and fall in love and save the world... or, you know... whatever.

It's about the writing.

Some of the speakers gave solid technical advice about story structure, and we scribbled madly along in our notebooks, and some gave funny, heartwarming, inspirational lectures that held us rapt, though we mightn't have jotted down a single thing. Some editors spoke about revisions, which I am going through right now on my first novel (which I will shortly be getting back to, just in case my editor reads my blog, and if you do, ahem, Jim and I made you cookies last night. Really!) There was a mock contract negotiation between an editor and an agent, which was a real education, and there were slideshows by illustrators and one fabulous short film by a young picture book writer/illustrator named Jarrett Krosoczka, about the rollercoaster ride of creating his first book.

Caroline Cooney, "the goddes of the YA novel" gave a terrific talk on crafting the novel, creating suspense, moving the story forward, making choices, and most importantly, writing writing writing, and FAST. Her "plotting" seminar later was a harrowing and exhilarating experience, as she stood before a packed room with eyes glinting wickedly and practically cracked a whip, throwing us prompts and forcing us to write a story then and there, following the twists and wiles of her own malicious mind (I say that very fondly. It was a GREAT workshop!). Her point? You can write a LOT in 45 minutes if you're actually writing, rather than worrying or examining your cuticles or petting the dog with your foot, or whatever.

She mentioned a technique called a "Dear Aunt Helen" letter, for getting your ideas on paper. It's kind of like the trick I already use, having a document open on my computer titled "working doc" rather than the daunting "Chapter 1" -- By writing: "Dear Aunt Helen, I'm writing this story, and it's about blah blah blah, and by the way blah blah blah..." you can sort of smuggle the story past your inner critic. Cool, huh? It's like psychological warfare... on yourself!

And there was so much more. Once again, I urge writers to go to conferences. I especially urge children's writers to go to this one. It's every August at the swank Century Plaza Hotel in L.A., just a few miles down the road from Santa Monica, as pictured above all lovely and sunsetty. There's a pool and a hot tub, and lots of palm trees on a patio where you can sip overpriced wine while looking up at the MGM tower next door and wondering what wheeling-dealing is going on THERE. There's a party Saturday night at which you can sidle up to editors and try to act like you know they're just people, too. And there are writers and artists from all over the country working on their own cool projects (hi Jolie & Sarah & Ryan & Kevin!), and don't forget the manuscript reviews and contests and grants for works in progress, and it just all around rocks, so go.

Here are some pictures of us:

What else I might still be...

The Sunday Scribblings prompt this week is: WHO else might I still be? I chose to change it to: WHAT else might I still be?

I will be ashes some day. Not for me that strange chemical facsimile of self, reluctant to decompose. It’s not the decomposition that troubles me. Presumably I won’t be there to smell it -- it’s just the real estate of the grave. The living take up enough space in this world. Why cede land to the dead? No cemetery for me and no urn. Just turn me loose, somewhere wild.

But apart from ashes, what else might I still be? Might I be a ghost? I think I would like to be a ghost for a while, to observe the living. I would choose one to follow, like I did one morning in Venice when I woke at dawn and went out to watch the Venetians hurrying to work. They knew all the shortcuts and alleys, all the tiny bridges, and I followed one after another, getting hopelessly lost, getting drawn into the heart of a secret city where real people did plain things, even within those dreamlike palazzi.

As a ghost, I will pass through walls and perch on the tall backs of chairs. I will taste the food on people’s forks as they lift them to their lips. I will listen to their lullabyes and laments, and I will disrupt their televisions so they have to find other ways to spend the evening. With a Ouija board, maybe. I’ll spell them secrets, like who is in love with them, and who is not.

Or might I be a shade? Might I awaken in the antechamber to the afterlife to hear the jolly I-told-you-so’s of Christians as they’re whisked rapturously upward? Might I be left to loll in Purgatory, forever seeing up the skirts of the righteous as they’re hefted to heaven? Maybe. Or are atheists sent down like hooligans to the headmaster’s office? I’ll be surly as a schoolboy. I’ll repeat every sentence the devils utter til they’re gritting their teeth. I’ll say, “I know you are, but what am I?” I’ll hold up two fingers behind their heads like horns whenever a photo is being snapped. I’ll run when I’m supposed to walk, and tapdance when I’m supposed to slouch.

Or might I get a chance to audition for heaven, despite my disbelief? Wouldn’t that be nice, if all the heathen babies didn’t burn in eternal hellfire? Even if I made it through and paradise was wonderful and golden, I would want to sneak back to life and tell people: “You only have to be good!” I would spread the word like an agnostic gospel: Be good and help people. That’s all that matters! (And maybe not telling other people they’re going to Hell looks good on your heavenly resume?)

But what do I really think I will be next, many many years from now? A body whose brain will inevitably fall still, and after that ashes, and then, nothing. It might not be as exciting as ghostlife or tapdancing in hell, but it’s not sad. Life is a beautiful thing, a shimmer, like a thread of spidersilk catching the light. And I think once it’s gone it’s gone, so you should love it all you can and not get caught up in dreaming how important you’ll be in Heaven, and whether God will remember your name or have to be reminded by the angel with the clipboard.

Sunday Scribblings -- very late!!

I posted last week's Sunday Scribblings prompt right before racing out of town for a week, so I'm really really late with it, but I'm determined not to miss any! The subject was "Who I might have been" and it could be interpreted many ways, but I'll stick with just telling what made me think of the prompt in the first place.

I caught part of a program on PBS about a young Danish aviatrix who flew a teeny tiny plane from Denmark to Kabul in 2002. It was quite an amazing story. She set off on this journey because of a documentary she'd seen on TV in which school children in Afghanistan right after the fall of the Taliban were talking about what they want to be when they grow up. Well, one young girl said she wanted to be a fighter pilot. Perhaps it was the great unlikelihood of that dream coming true that prompted the aviatrix to plot her journey -- I don't know. I suspect it was the journey itself that settled into her soul, and the little girl at the other end was just sort of punctuation to the adventure. At least I hope so. Because after an incredible series of flights in her really very small plane, against all odds and without the permission of the US military, she arrived in Kabul. She met the girl and took her flying. And, well, the girl didn't really seem all that keen on being a pilot after all. Wah-wah-wah.

It wasn't the most uplifting finale to a documentary, but it was so REAL. Imagine if when you were twelve some stranger in a faraway land overheard you say what you wanted to be when you grew up, and then staged a daring journey to come and help you fulfill your dream. Well, that's awesome, but... when I was twelve I wanted to be pathologist for a while, and I'm really glad no one flew around the world to teach me how to perform an autopsy!

What does this have to do with the Sunday Scribblings prompt? It was just the Afghan girl's life that got me thinking. She had a loving and supportive family, including a father who wanted her to succeed -- she had it better than a lot of girls in Afghanistan. She wasn't being sold to an eighty-year-old mullah to be his sixth wife. But she was still a young girl in Afghanistan and as such, her options were very limited! Even if someone miraculously flew a plane into her city just to help her fulfill her dreams, would she know what to do with that? Dream-following takes practice. You can't really spring it on someone and expect them to know just what to do, to show up on time for their dream-following appointments! Some people are born with the miraculous inner resources to grab onto their opportunities, but not everyone. Not MOST people.

How about me? I'd like to think I have those inner resources, but how can I know? I've been lucky to the point of blessed. I mean, I'm not from a rich family, but a loving family who always supported my dreams. I never had to listen to any uncles telling me I would shame the family by being seen in an airplane!! I distinctly remember the point in my life when I realized how foolish it was to believe everyone should be expected to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps." I let go of my Ayn Rand-inspired teenage elitism and opened my mind a little.

When I was 17 I lived in Paris for three months and all my French friends were card-carrying members of the Communist party. Really. That was something out of the 1950's to an American teenager in the late '80s. Communism was a historical failure, right? Queuing for toilet paper and all that? But to my French friends it was the principle that people deserve a level playing field, that not all humans are born with the tenacity and strength and intelligence to fight their way out of poverty and just because someone's not a genius, do they deserve misery? Shouldn't society take care of its citizens? So simple!

I'm not saying I converted, but the arguments surely did wonders for my French -- there was a memorable weekend manning a crepe booth at "La Fete de l'Humanite," a kind of Communist carnival outside of Paris, when my language skills were put to task defending my country! (Something I wouldn't attempt in France now even in ENGLISH.)

I'll write a bit about the Children's Book Conference Jim and Alexandra and I have been at in a day or two. Cheers! Hope everyone is doing well!

More Show & Tell

Here's a mock-up of the cover of my book!! I didn't think I'd be able to show Jim's awesome artwork for a while, but the art director just gave him the go-ahead to post it on his website, so I figure, it's fair game. Isn't it gorgeous? I think the lettering will probably change, but this is basically it. I LOVE it! (Jim isn't a very active blogger, but I know he'd love to get some comments about this cover, if you happen to find your way to his blog.)

I've been having kind of a hard time keeping up with blogs lately, what with work and summer stuff like family trips, and I'm looking forward to the Northwest rains to return and keep us housebound in a cloudy grey coccoon. I do love the Oregon rain! I love the smell of it, the sound of it on the roof and windows, and I love the green it brings. Not so green now. Bring on the rain, sky gods! I love the calm of winter, coffee in the kitchen, long days of writing wrapped in a warm sweater... sigh... Come on, rain!

PS - Apropos of nothing, my ridiculous shoe order was delivered today and har har har, the joke's on me. They're high alright. Hoo boy. One pair in particular is so absurd. ABSURD. It's the middle pair, if you care to know. Those of you who wondered how I walk in such shoes? Actually, they're quite steady -- that's not the problem. Walking in them is kind of like walking with overturned buckets strapped to your feet! You're not going to tip over or turn an ankle, but dang, your feet weigh about 20 pounds each! I'm not sure if I'm going to return them or keep them for dress-up (the Halloween kind, not the date night kind). But the other two pair are wearably absurd, I think. I'll take some photos of them in action!

Holiday Laini's Ladies

It might still seem a little early to be showing holiday designs, but I have been very restrained about it -- I did these designs back in January! As with publishing, so too with gift products: you work several seasons, if not years, ahead of time -- It takes some getting used to. I'm working on Valentine's and Mother's Day right now, in fact. I waited to post these designs until the manufacturer, Bottman, could show them at their summer gift shows, and that time is now. So here they are! They'll be available as ornaments, greeting cards, and gift tags:





And this pair is kind of its own little set, with the birdies and all:


These will be in stores in the fall, and can also be found here. Also, when I was at the coast this weekend I saw that my 2007 desk calendars are out in some stores. Yay!

Sunday Scribblings; Two Cents

I have been out of town all weekend and so haven't been able to read any of the new Sunday Scribblings responses. I DO see however, that the site was the Yahoo pick of the day yesterday. Yay, us!

I'm quite glum today and approaching a stretch of treacherous overwork that will cause me to seem to disappear from the universe, but I haven't missed a Sunday Scribble yet and don't plan to. So I'm going to sort of unhinge my forehead and see what spills out:

Two cents. I don't know where the expression comes from, but to me in my current state, two shiny pennies in a pocket in no way sums up the need to GIVE MY OPINION. It's more like a sulfur-spewing dragon perched on my shoulder, threatening to incinerate anyone who comes too close. Pennies? They seem so sweet and inoffensive, like something Laura Ingalls got in her Christmas stocking, along with a stick of candy and an orange. When the need to share my thoughts builds in me... it's like a Hindenburg waiting to happen. But I don't WANT to be that person, the explosive know-it-all -- who likes an explosive know-it-all? -- so I try to bite it back. I let the conversation play and replay in my head (or, as the case may be, in my email, carefully unaddressed so I don't hit "send" by accident!) and I'm always so much more clever in my head, with no one snapping back. Often these little theatrical dialogues in my mind are all I really need, an outlet to diminish the fury of righteousness that has built up in me. Then, having triumphed in this scene of my imagining, I can proceed in a much more charitable way to address whatever real issue exists. Dragon temporarily tamed.

Right now, as it happens, my dragon is suffering the indigestion of swallowing too much of its own sulphur, because you know, you can't always say what you want to say. Sometimes the pennies have to stay in your damn pocket. I recall how blithely I would "fire" customers when I worked retail as a teenager, giving my 2 cents as if it was my duty to point out to people how unsophisticated and simple they were. (Ah, bookstore clerks! How superior they think themselves!) Later, working for myself: a world of difference. Ah, how I could bite my tongue to not risk losing a sale when the money was bound for my own meager wallet! I guess that's part of growing up. Knowing that saying whatever is on your mind is not ALWAYS the best way of getting what you want. Diplomacy: you know, knowing how to behave in a situation, like when NOT to give the German chancellor a shoulder rub! HA!

[In unrelated but exciting news, two people have told me they've spotted Laini's Ladies in the Skymall Magazine on recent flights. How cool is that?]

Hostage

I have your dolly. She is being well treated and as long as you cooperate she will not be harmed. Just show up at the gym each morning at 6 am and in 2 weeks she can come home - if she still wants to. I think she might decide to stay here permanently. Look how good she looks with all those pillows! Also, we let her eat junk cereal, which she says she never gets at home. Signed, Your Kidnapper

It wasn't my idea! Alexandra wanted a little extra incentive to get her butt to the gym for our early morning workouts, so while Jim and I were over at her house she decided to give us something to hold hostage. In order to work it had to be something she loved, but everything I suggested seemed to be something she loved TOO much. It finally came down to a doll version of Sophie's choice. You see, this doll has a sister, one that Alexandra clearly loves better. Squeezing shut her eyes she thrust this doll into my arms and covered her ears so she couldn't hear its tragic cries. I leave it to you to judge her cruelty. In her defense, she has VISITED the doll several times at my house and whispered reassuring words in its ear. AND she has been showing up at the gym, so soon the doll sisters will be reunited. All is well.

The morning workouts have been good. 6 am is freakishly early, but knowing that someone else is straggling out of bed too makes it a little easier. Actually, a lot of someones are. The gym is full at 6 am! What a lot of lean and motivated people there are in the world! Building a new routine feels good too. Over the past several years Jim and I have been adjusting our routine to rise earlier and earlier, arriving at this all-time early of 5:30, just to squeeze more time out of the day. Like toothpaste from a nearly empty tube -- you have to keep rolling it up to get out every little squish. Well, if we keep on like this, rolling up our days like tubes of toothpaste, we'll be getting up at 2 am by the time we're 40! Oy!

It occurred to me the other day to wonder at the strangeness of needing sleep. And so MUCH sleep. What is it in our brains that needs to be shut down like that for so many hours at a time? Any brain experts out there with the answer?

I buy stripper shoes

Let me hasten to say, I am not a stripper. It doesn't fall into my skill set. But I buy shoes from a website that sells stripper shoes. 8" spike-heeled red leather thigh boots, etc. I don't buy those, of course, but the less strippery ones, like those above. I just placed an order for those three pairs (the first pair in black, the second in red, the last as shown). The third pair has a 6-1/4-inch heel, which will be my highest to date, surpassing the 5-1/2-inch cowboy boots Jim got me for Christmas. Do you think me mad? I am addicted to height. If height addiction is like drug addiction then 3-inch platforms were my gateway drug and I am well into the next phase. I can't quit. I really can't. You see, all my pants acquisitions have taken into account the phony extra inches, and if I were to suddenly start wearing flat shoes I would either have to a) learn to hem, or b) buy all new pants. Trousers, that is, for you English. (I once told an English boy he had a hole in his "pants," not realizing that meant undies. There was blushing.)

Alexandra dog-sat for us recently and tried to borrow some of my shoes and HA HA! Having crazy tall shoes is kind of like the shoe equivalent of driving a two-seater so you don't have to offer people rides. NO ONE wants to borrow my shoes! I am alone in my madness, it seems. Except for the strippers. No, I know I'm not alone, but it does irk me when I try to shop in regular non-stripper stores and there is nothing to suit me and my addiction. Yesterday I shopped, and I think I must begin to admit to myself I have a problem, because the three-inch platforms just aren't cutting it for me anymore.

My name is Laini and I'm a heightoholic.

Do you think that hitting rock bottom as a heightoholic will involve stilts?

best things to steal

Weapons are the best things to steal. Steal them from the sweaty fingers of evil people and tie the gun barrels in knots cartoon-style, and collect all the knives and hurl them out of the atmosphere. Try not to hit the moon, because then astronauts will find them and pick knife fights with each other and poke holes in each other’s space suits and deflate. And then our rocket ships would just be parked on the moon with the keys in the ignition, waiting for aliens to find them and go joy-riding.

Steal bombs out of bunkers and replace them with pianos and tubas and model ship-in-bottle kits, so instead of bombing people the terrorists could have hobbies. Don’t forget to include sheet music and wood glue. And snacks, because new hobbies make you hungry.

Steal the black belts right off the waists of kung fu masters. If you can do this, you deserve them more than they do.

Steal animal traps from fields and forests. Set them up in the lobbies of places like Haliburton and GE and the White House. Bait them with money and no-bid contracts. Have a taxidermist standing by to stuff the severed hands as a warning to future generations.

Steal Gothic spires off cathedrals and use them as trellises in your garden. Grow tomato vines and green beans on them and then when you eat your veggies a little bit of holiness will make its way through your digestive tract and into the plumbing, and eventually, to the rivers and oceans, which are in some need of holiness.

Steal coins from wishing wells and see if you can tell, by holding each coin in your fist and concentrating really hard, what wish went with what coin. If you find you have a talent for this, become a fairy godmother.

Steal souls back from the devil. You’ll have to distract him with a Gameboy and then dig up the field in Texas where he keeps the souls buried in small black wedding ring boxes, caked with dust. The souls will be shrunk to the size of lentils or smaller. Take them and go on a pilgrimage -- whenever you find someone without a soul, slip one into his beer or back pocket. The rest will happen naturally.

This has been a Sunday Scribbling. For more tales of thievery, go here.

Ilustration vs Fine Art: a fight to the death

Okay, not to the death, maybe, but there's some tension between illustration and fine art. Recently another blogger asked me about illustration: what is it? How is it distinguished from "fine art"? This is a tricky question: do you know the difference? I'm going to attempt to say what it is, but I'm kind of making it up, so if you have an opinion, let me know what it is!

Illustration. I studied illustration in art school, and my goal was always to illustrate books, whereas I guess a fine artist's goal is to sell original work in gallery shows. For me, the essential difference between illustration and fine art lies not as much in style and medium as in intent: what is the purpose of the particular art work? Illustration is created to be reproduced, be that in a book, on a poster, advertisement, or whatever. I like to think of illustration as "singing for its supper." It has a job to do, whether it's telling a story, or conveying something about a product, and the artist will not be standing next to it to explain it. It must be fully self-sufficient.

Fine art, on the other hand, just is. It can be a bent wire on a wall, or a rumpled bed installation at a snooty gallery, or a geometric painting, or it can be a luminous landscape painting, a portrait, or... and this is where it can get weird, it can also depict a scene and tell a story, just like an illustration. Lots of fine art is illustrative; just as lots of illustration is fine art. But what makes the Sistine Chapel ceiling NOT an illustration, even though it tells a story? It was not done with the intention of being printed and distributed. Ideally fine art should be either beautiful or though-provoking or both, but there's not a heavy burden on it that it convey a clear message.

So why is it important to make a distinction? I don't know if it IS important, but the distinction is made -- when I was in art school at the California College of Art in San Francisco, the painting and illustration departments were wholly distinct from each other, and there was a certain amount of scorn on each side. I know the painters looked down on illustrators as commercial sell-outs, while the illustrators thought [sometimes] that the painters were arty-farty phonies of the type who WOULD hang a bent wire on the wall and have the gall to call it art. Being an illustrator, I am much more familiar with discrimination against fine art, because I am a perpetrator of it. I admit it! I don't "get" abstract art, or bent wires, or babies sculpted from raw meat. I'm not going to say it's not art, but... well, to me, it's not good or interesting art. But that's just me. We illustrators were sometimes known to say, walking through the school's galleries and studio space, "don't step on the art" because you could never be entirely certain if a pile of trash was really a pile of trash, or someone's senior "installation". Ha! There was once a senior photography show that consisted of close-up photos of subjects' face juxtaposed with close-ups of their anuses. That, my friends, is not illustration. It's fine art. I guess. I could go on about weird "art" around campus. Some of it I liked (the laundry line from which enormous clothes were hanging, for example. It made me smile!), some not (the piece of sod with a spike rising from it and a balloon tied to the spike). Whatever!

So meanwhile, what were the illustrators doing? We were learning to paint, but not in the painting department. At CCAC the painting classes weren't very technique-oriented, and illustrators DO need technique, perhaps more than fine artists. Our assignments were more structured. Album covers, art for snowboards or skateboards, magazine covers, book covers, editorial illustration (usually, to accompany a magazine article), things like that. The goal of illustrators is usually to establish a successful freelance career, getting interesting assignments from different art directors, doing book and magazine covers and interiors, ad campaigns, maybe getting into character design for video games or storyboarding for a movie studio. There are clients, and the work is tailored. Usually. My goal was always to write and illustrate my own books and to create what I wanted, and for several years I did that, selling prints of my illustrative paintings at an art fair, before getting into licensing. I've worked with a few art directors, and had very positive experiences with them, and I've only ever done work that was fun for me. Jim went a different route in illustation, doing comic books and role-playing game fantasy art for a few years, though now he is getting more into book illustration and product design & licensing.

I would like to hear more from fine artists -- and to be clear that I do not scorn fine art. There are many gallery painters whose work I love, whose skill I deeply admire (and even covet). It's just FUN to tell the stories of the anuses and meat babies, so I make the most of that silly side of fine art, just for "color." But there are plenty of artists who straddle the line between illustration and fine art and make strong careers on both sides. A few examples are James Jean, Natalie Ascensios, Kinuko Craft, Jon Foster and many more.

I've also recently become familiar with the Duirwaigh Gallery, which focuses on gorgeous fantasy art that crosses that line between illustration and fine art. Its founder has also started a blog which is a lot of fun!

Treadmill daydreams

Exciting exercise news: plans to be at the gym at 6 am every day for 2 weeks. Isn't that a thrill? I've made it 3 days so far, and there's something spectacular about having worked out, walked the dogs, eaten breakfast, and gotten in an hour of writing by 9:30 am! Also, I get great ideas on the treadmill. I'm a daydreamer, yes, and sometimes I let my daydreams drift aimlessly, and other times I focus them like a camera lens. "Focused daydreaming." My best places for this are on the treadmill and in the shower. In the past few workouts the plot of my novel-in-progress has come together like interlacing fingers, all thanks to the monotony of running on a band of rubber. So, I reason that instead of spending the first hour of my day blinking sleepily and drinking coffee, expecting my brain to work at 6 am, I will exercise first and warm up my brain in the process. A new routine! I also recommend focused daydreaming to other creative souls -- it sometimes takes a little training, to keep your mind on the task at hand, but it's just another way to squeeze some more time out of the day!

I met the amazing Anahata for lunch yesterday at the Blossoming Lotus Cafe. It was such a treat to see her in person again! We met three years ago at the National Stationery Show in New York, where she had a booth for her company Papaya, and I was walking around looking for potential licensees (this was when I met Bottman, the company that licenses my Laini's Ladies art). Ever since as I have seen Anahata's gorgeous greeting cards in more and more places, and seen them get more sophisticated and beautiful, I've been cheering her on. And then, recently, I got an email that she had started a blog! And I discovered she lived in Oregon now! So, after three years we actually got to have lunch together and see where our art/business paths have led us each. Different routes, but both good.

Writing room news: The new walls are done and the room is painted! I chose the Behr color "Lipstick" and I LOVE it. In some light it is a rich red-orange; other times it is more coral, sometimes the shade of the flush of red on a mango, sometimes the glowing ruby of a pomegranate seed. A few more steps before the furniture is ready to move in. Can't wait! Ooh, also: I got new glasses finally, my first in 10 years, and let me tell you, glasses frames have CHANGED in 10 years. They're all small and cool and beatnikky now, and they make me feel clever and sly (Isn't "sly" a good word?), like the girl sitting in the corner at the library thinking mysterious things.

Sunday Scribblings #16: "With Baggage"

(That poster has nothing to do with my post; I just like it!) This Sunday Scribble was inspired by something I wrote recently about travelers to the first alien planet opened to travelers. I wondered, what would they bring?

Darklis and Maximoff rarely argued anymore. Their colleagues said they had exhausted all possible topics of controversy when they were newlyweds and could be heard late into the night, night after night, at whatever wigwam, yurt, or igloo was their home for the season. Darklis had a contralto voice and Maximoff was a bass, so their passionate discussions had never been shrill, just a low background noise the other scientists grew accustomed to, like crickets or swamp frogs in the night. They had talked about everything. Djinn, mummies, Krakatoa, the Upanishads and the Shahnameh, the virtues of boomslang venom versus cone snails, the crushing force of an eagle owl’s talons, the death rites of Zoroastrians, and the proper pronunciation of the name of a banshee they had met in an Irish cemetery on their honeymoon.

They were the only couple anyone knew who had honeymooned in a cemetery.

Now, 35 years on, Darklis and Maximoff Kalderash had mapped the alleys of each others minds so well they had only to meet eyes, hers so dark they seemed pupilless, his pale pond green, to seem to have a whole discussion without words. Their children found it unnerving, as if, in some pyramid or chasm somewhere on their travels, their parents had discovered an instruction manual for telepathy and kept it to themselves.It was rather a relief to hear them arguing now.

“Firecrackers? Are you telling me firecrackers express something fundamental about humanity?” said Darklis.

“Absolutely," Maximoff replied. "What’s more human than the desire to blow things up?”

“I wish you were joking.”

“I wish I was, too, but look at the world. And as we can’t very well bring bombs to Andrash, we may as well bring fireworks.”

“NASA will never allow it, anyway, Max. Nothing combustible, remember? You can find some other way to teach the natives about war. Or,” Darklis smiled mischievously at her husband, “we can just edit that out.”

He laughed. “You want to teach human history to an alien race and edit out the bits about war? Have fun, darling. I’d like to see the history books after you’ve been through them with a censor’s marker.”

“There wouldn’t be much left, would there?”

Maximoff laughed. “A little art, some agriculture... couldn’t get near religion...”

They started to laugh and got the giggles, thinking of the slender volume of history they could present if they were to avoid any mention of the wars that had shaped their civilization. They kept trying to say, "It isn't funny," and then dissolving back into helpless laughter. “There’s nothing for it,” Darklis said finally. “They’ll soon see what a warmongering race they’ve welcomed to their planet.”

“So what can we bring to offset that image? That’s what we need to think about.”

“Indeed.”

The fleet was leaving for Andrash in one month, and the Kalderash family with it. Scouts had been negotiating this diplomatic mission through the stars for more than ten years, and the time was here at last. For most of those ten years Darklis and Maximoff had been keeping lists of what they would bring should they be approved for the mission, and now they were finalizing those lists and packing their steamer trunks.

The coffee was already packed, of course, and the chocolate. Trays of spices, sealed and labeled by continent. Bundled silks and brocades and bolts of synthetics like fleece made of recycled plastic. Gems. Gold. Antiobiotics. Carved jade. Eyeglasses. A telescope from the middle ages, and several new telescopes, state of the art. A bicycle and a sack of soccer balls. Books. The Arabian Nights, Harry Potter, and the planet’s religious texts in no particular order. Photo albums from 25 families and the complete set of National Geographic magazines. Hair clips, donated human braids in every conceivable color, butterfly wings, cases of colored feathers, the complete skeletons of eighty species of creatures. Bags of potato chips, snack size, and a case of Jell-o instant pudding mix -- just add water! There was water on Andrash, but as of yet, there was no pudding.

Comic books and candles, a violin, a guitar, and a saxaphone. A ventriloquist’s dummy and a soldier sculpture from a Chinese tomb. A lifesize replica of Michelangelo’s David, and a statue of Kali -- Darklis had argued the goddess’s many arms would confuse the Andrashians, but Maximoff won that argument.

And then there were the living things. Not pairs -- this was no Noah’s Arc. Single caged creatures: a horse, a Siberian Husky, a tabby cat and a snow-white chicken, a spider monkey, a gazelle, an iguana, a camel, a flamingo, a fruit bat, a kangaroo, and a tank of angel fish. They would be put to sleep for the voyage as the human passengers were, and would awaken in a strange landscape. Everyone on Earth had seen the photos: the hills red as blood, the alien vegetation, the tall cone houses and the strange beings that lived in them.

“What else?” Maximoff asked. “What are we missing?”

What would you take in your baggage to another planet, in an attempt to explain our world to aliens?

(P.S. All names in this story came from my recent research into Romany names. How cool are they? Darklis? Andrash? So cool.)

thanky thanky thanky

Yay to my new banner (& thanks for your compliments) & thanks especially to the technical genius of Bohemian Girl, without whom this design would still be a sad little orphan on my desktop. Thanks, Denise!

And thanks also to Greenish Lady for sending me her exquisite poetry book, Shout If You Want Me To Sing. It's beautiful in content and presentation -- gorgeous cover, but especially, gorgeous poems! Thanks, Imelda!

And thanks also to Bonnie for her facts about peepal trees when she read my story "Spicy Little Curses Such As These" (I hope I didn't scare you with my babbling excited email about picking your brain with all sorts of geography and landscape and flora & fauna questions about Central Asia and the Himalayas. I wish I could go on a fact-finding mission of my own, but alas, it's a world away.)

I am deep in research for my second novel, and have been trying to nail down the exotic locations around Asia, to give it a real feeling of place, which is an ambitious thing to attempt with a place one has never been, but I'm going to try it anyway. I got very sidetracked in my reading about the Old Silk Road yesterday evening and ended up drooling over adventure vacations that follow said road to Samarkand and beyond... And though Central Asia isn't at the top of my travel to-do list, this site made me want to do something rash like book a trip to a place I had never even heard of before, like Lake Son-Kul on the "Kyrgyz Riviera". Who knew Kyrgystan had a riviera? And at 4000 meters elevation. It is, apparently, a paradise for shepherds. I resisted the impulse to book the trip.

Other current subjects of research: silk production, especially cottage industry; the teak trade; dragonflies; caravansarays; Romany names; the Hindu Kush, and more. It's amazing the way the world starts to unfold when you just pick a topic you don't know about and start poking around. How many worlds there are, essentially tucked into this one world. And how many pockets in time. It all just lights my mind on fire. I wish I could've taken more history classes in college. I wish I had time to now. In any case, thank god for books and the internet!

And lastly, thanks for all the well-wishing about Jim's health. Fingers crossed, for all of us, that the big C stays well out of our lives and the lives of everyone we know & love.

Good news & bad news

That's a picture of dinner last night. Yummm... I had just finished making vegetable soup and I looked at it and completely didn't feel like eating it. It wasn't even that hot, it just wasn't a "soupy" kind of night. It was a "fruity" night. Maybe because we'd had a heavy-ish lunch downtown earlier in the day -- it was a celebratory lunch. Yesterday was Jim's two-year-cancer-free-iversary. Yay! It was the biannual trip to the oncologist to get test results, which continue well, but to be honest, no trip to the oncologist is really a nice thing. No matter how good of news one gets, there are all those other people waiting in the waiting room, young and old, and it's a glimpse into a world we seldom see, if we're lucky. It's still surreal to me, walking through a door that says "oncology" on it. The first time, I almost had a panic attack. It would have been my first. I'm not a panicker, but I started to breathe weird and felt this hysteria welling up in me. Now... it's still freaky, and then after the good news, still sad for the other people.

I will also always remember when Jim came home after his surgery and we had rented some videos and set him up on the couch to relax and watch The Office -- the British version. Words of wisdom: do not rent comedy for people fresh out of abdominal surgery! Laughter is not always the best medicine! He had to keep trying to laugh without moving his abdominal muscles, and it was the funniest sounding thing! (We are still big Office fans, US version, too. Dwight Shrute is one of my favorite characters on TV. Love him!)

On a sad note, though, it looks like the coyotes have gotten another of my mother's cats, this time the baby, Zucca (Pumpkin) who just celebrated his first birthday, party and all. Because my parents live on the edge of the wilds of Forest Park, the cats are only allowed out very sparingly, in daylight, and closely watched. But Zucca is a mad little hunter and he busted through a screen and got out... and he hasn't come back. There is already an engraved stone at the edge of the garden for "Our Old Warrior," my mom's eighteen-year-old tomcat Pesca who got grabbed by something in broad daylight when they first moved to Oregon. My mom is beginning to hate her beautiful house and its invisibly circling gang of horrible coyotes, which she has never gotten so much of a glimpse of. I still have a teeny tiny hope that little Zucca might come back, but you know how it goes.

Furniture Frenzy!!

I have a new favorite furniture store -- which is not to say I have an old favorite furniture store -- we don't buy furniture. We're artists... we don't walk into stores and point at $1400 sofas and say "I'll take it." Noooo, among my people, sari fabric draped over parents' hand-me-down sofas is a "new sofa." Well, until now...

The new favorite furniture store is Cargo, in the Pearl District. It's a warehouse filled with antique chests and benches and puppet theaters from Java and Bali and China, with parasols and lanterns and dusty rugs, cabinet beds and trays and beads and old rusty gates and pieces of houses that we must imagine, have finally fallen over on some backstreet of Surabaya or Jombang. I went to Cargo by mistake a few weeks back when I was hunting for a glass shop to buy glass for my mosaic table, and I walked in and almost had a heart attack. I wanted to call Jim, but as usual my cell phone battery was dead (I just can't be bothered plugging that thing in) so I had to wander around gasping like a fish, like a furniture-loving fish. I have never really been into Asian style. Not for me, the fu dogs and shiny busy Chinese ceramics. But our trip to Turkey (mentioned in my last post) instilled in us a love for the gypsy caravan look of Turkish rugs and peeling chests of the Near East, and Turkey is as near as the east gets, of course. But now, my love has extended to Indonesian antiques.

Pictured above is our adored new "bench" from Bali (bench is such an inadequate term!) -- you see, Jim gasped like a furniture-fish too when I dragged him into Cargo a few days ago and agreed we needed to adopt it immediately into our loving family, and after wrangling this piece of solid teak massiveness into the back of the truck and barely BARELY squeezing it through the front door, it is presiding over the living room in quite a queenly fashion. As Alexandra has been known to do with her beloved leather armchair, we are still in the phase of sitting in the old sofa so we can LOOK at it, rathing than actually sitting ON it. And you can't really grasp the size of the thing in the photos, but when I sit on it, my toes do not reach the floor!!

I also went a little crazy and bought a cool old Indonesian porch pillar for the corner of my writing room (the work is progressing in there!) to hang lanterns off of or something, but now I need to revert to the old ways of not buying things, and try to forget this little mania that overcame me. Not buying things is a pretty easy habit to maintain, when you're a starving artist, but buying things can become a habit pretty easily too, when you become less starving. I think we're furnitured up for the next little while!

Sunday Scribblings #15: Hotel Stories

1. The year I was nine we lived in the Hotel Flamingo for more than a month: two parents, three kids, and one very large Alaskan Malamute who would become known in this Italian town as “cane lupo.” Dog wolf. We weren’t the only Americans in residence at the Flamingo, there were a number of other Navy families in our same situation: just arrived from the States, househunting. The school bus picked us up there, and the hotel kitchen made us bag lunches. We did our homework in the Mediterranean heat, poolside. There were skirmishes with Italian kids in the side alleys. We had assigned tables in the dining room, and regular waitors. Ours, Bruno, was a darling with curly hair and was surely one of my earliest crushes. We moved into an apartment nearby and didn’t return to the Flamingo, but many Americans did, spending summer days beside a very ordinary hotel pool when a gem of a beach was just a short walk away! The Flamingo was one of the centers of Americans-pretending-to-be-in-America; it was safe. But my family was different: my mom spoke fluent Italian and had lived in Rome for a year in the ‘60s, when she was a beautiful girl with green eyeshadow. In Gaeta she recruited Italian boys to coach our soccer teams, and became the only Navy wife whose best friend was Italian. But those weeks in the hotel were a treat for a nine year old, like a long vacation!

2. When I was eleven we all piled into our beat-up green Volkswagon bus and drove up through Italy to Nice, France, for Mardi Gras. We checked into our modest little pensione and went out to explore the city; while out and about, my father ran into a woman he knew, the woman who happened to be in charge of the city’s carnival parades. My father was at that time responsible for making the schedules of ports of call for every US Navy vessel in the Mediterranean, and I have a vague impression he knew her somehow through his work duties. In any case, she was busy and gave him the brush off. Fine. But when we returned to our little pensione later that day we were told men had come to take our luggage away! We pictured thugs, thieves! But in fact this woman, regretting her rudeness, had found out where we were staying and moved us to the official hotel of the Carnival: the Negresco.

The Negresco is a 5-star hotel. It remains the only 5-star hotel I have ever set foot in. When we pulled up to the valet in our ratty VW with gouge marks on both sides from getting wedged in an alley in Naples, we felt... out of our element. We pretended to belong there. I can just picture my brother and I in our ski parkas (it was the Riviera, yes, but February, and raining), noses snootily in the air as if we did this every day! Our room, compliments of, I suppose, the City of Nice, was an eleven-room suite overlooking the beach and the parade route. It was HEAVEN!! And the room-service breakfast cart, piled with delectable things... Like a dream. Paloma Picasso was a guest while we were there, and at one point a Saudi man in full sheik attire took a liking to my white-blonde five-year-old sister and told my mother he would buy Emily anything she wanted in the hotel gift gallery. To my mother’s mortification, he was pointing out diamonds, but my sister saved the day as only a five-year-old can, by desiring only chocolate, an acceptable gift from a strange rich sheik!

3. I have slept in a fairy chimney, and in a treehouse by the sea! Both, in Turkey. Jim and I went to Turkey six years ago, in between visiting Alexandra in Bulgaria and going on to Italy, where Jim proposed to me! And we LOVED Turkey. Go there, everyone! And if you go, go to Cappadoccia. It is the most otherworldly landscape I have ever explored, a sandcastle of a land, barren and bizarre and so outrageously beautiful. “Fairy chimneys” are the name for the dwellings hollowed out of the strange rock formations, and in Goreme, all the hotels are carved into the rock. They’re not fussy, but have rough-hewn windows and lots of Turkish carpets, and patios overlooking the most amazing cityscapes.

The treehouse was set in a lemon grove at Olympos, by the sea. A rickety bus carried us down into a forested ravine and back along a single road lined with clusters of treehouses. A short ramble through thick forest, past Byzantine ruins, leads to a secluded beach. And at night there are hikes up the mountain to see a naturally occuring eternal flame, flickering right out of the rock now for hundreds of years. If you go, bring marshmallows. We didn’t, but thought it would have been fun!

I love travel, and I love hotels and youth hostels in old strange buildings. In Spain I stayed in a former prison, in Vietnam in a room in the belly of a giant giraffe sculpture! I have never yet slept in a hammock slung in a beach shack in Mexico, but I would like to, someday! And as fun as that stay at the Negresco was when I was eleven, I would take the fairy chimney or the treehouse, or the modest little pensione by the cathedral in Amalfi, any day, and spend the difference buying puppets and blown-glass perfume bottles and sandals!

for more "hotel stories" go here.

the fruit of my lacerations

I'm typing this with wounded fingers. I have finished my mosaic table and, as with my one previous mosaic experience, my fingers aren't pretty. I thought things were going pretty well, I got through the glass-cutting with but a few tiny glass splinters in my fingertips. I had sort of forgotten that it is the grouting process that is murder on fingers. Ouch. Because I used glass, very pointy, sharp glass, instead of mosaic craft tiles, it is very hard to smooth the grout on, and to wipe the surface clean as it dries, without lacerating one's fingers. But anyway, it's done! Here are some more pictures:


I used scrapbook letters to spell out the words, and sealed them down with matte medium, and then mosaiced with clear glass where I wanted them to show. Ditto with the polka dots on the top. So it's a combo collage/mosaic. Now, I will let my fingers heal for a few days before I go back to fix the grout, which in my haste, I wiped away too much of.

I hope my fellow Americans out there had a lovely 4th of July. We did. We don't ever go out on the 4th, which other dog owners will understand: my poor old Shiloh probably drooled half her body weight with her freakish panicked panting last night. Dogs do not love fireworks, and as Jim said last night, the first thing they will do when they take over the world, is abolish holidays that involve explosions. We had some friends over for BBQ and build-your-own banana splits:

(That's Camille showing me how she can put her toe in her mouth. I think I can probably do it, too, but I won't try.) And there is Maggie and Chary with the banana split fixins, and Jim with his masterpiece, shortly before devouring it.

We also took my niece Izzy hiking to Punchbowl Falls in the Columbia Gorge on Sunday:

I LOVE it there. The perfect place on a hot day. The falls go through a small ravine that widens out to a bank of sun-warmed rocks, and then to another waterfall, and there are places to wade in the deliciously cool shade, and then just a few steps away you can stretch out like a lizard in the sun if you want. You can jump off cliffs if you're insane, or swim out to the falls, but it's icy, so wading usually cures my desire to swim. Izzy did go swimming in her clothes though.

And lastly, after writing my last post, I DID call Lori in Amsterdam and we had a lovely chat, and Jim and I are scheming to maybe visit Holland in the fall, and try to time it to my old babysitter/soccer coach's wedding in Genoa, Italy, and do both. Hm. Might just be a fantasy. But often, things that start as fantasies become reality. Fingers crossed!

Sunday Scribblings #14 - "Two peas in a pod"

There is only really one person who comes to mind for me when I think "two peas in a pod:" Lori! My other half in high school, Lori Lee Fitzgerald. We met at a Model United Nations meeting at Fountain Valley High School, California, in the heart of Orange County in the worst of all hair decades: the dread '80s. 1987, to be precise. Lori was a native to this soil; I was a newcomer, fresh from 6 years in Europe, and I was discovering that most of my new classmates had no idea where "Belgium" was. Texas? Eastern Europe? Close... (Have you heard the horrifying tales of Americans' geography skills? They're true.) I had come from a school of 200 kids, to a monstrosity of 3000+, a zoo of weird bad hair choices a few miles from the beach. I had made some friends playing soccer over the summer, so I had some girls to eat lunch with, but it wasn't until I met Lori that I had a REAL friend, and instantly. An instant click. After that, we were inseparable. I can't hear Erasure songs without flashing back to her, and to the boy we both had a year-long unrequited crush on. For me, this agonizing crush ended abruptly when this boy corrected my grammar. It was like a switch had been flipped. I saw him later, we both went to college at Berkeley, and he looked... meager... as is the way with so many cute boys from high school when you get a peek at them in college. My other big crush went to Lori's college so I saw him too. He was the adored-by-all quarterback of the football team, with black hair and light light blue eyes, and he didn't look meager, just balding, which inspired a certain amount of schadenfreude.

But it wasn't all boys. I sort of cringe thinking of what the social world of that time and place was like, the stupid parties I never enjoyed, the big expensive proms and the football games. But I have very fond memories of driving the Coast Highway with Lori in my convertible beetle with the top down, singing at the top of our lungs. A lot of the other stuff is sort of vague now. I was NOT one of those people who lamented the end of high school. The DAY AFTER graduation I was on a plane back to Europe, and didn't come home, and missed my first semester of college.

Ironically, it is LORI who is now an EU citizen. She married a Dutchman and has lived in Amsterdam for some 12 years now. The picture above is when I visited her there ten years ago. Ten years! God, how time goes by! So we're two peas long ago shelled out of our pod, but I love her dearly. I think I'll call her...

Robot Friends

As Jim has also just posted about, yesterday we went down to OMSI (the children's science museum) to see the Robot exhibit. As you see above, we had some meaningful conversation with new friends. I love OMSI, and every time my niece Izzy visits I take her there -- over spring break we went to the Animation exhibit and made our own stop-motion dance movie; previously it was the "Animal Grossology" exhibit -- all the grossest things about critters. Great stuff! Usually we also see an Omnimax movie on the huge dome screen (a crazy-gorgeous experience!), and buy stuff from the great gift shop. like freeze-dried icecream sandwiches! I think we should all remember, even if we don't have kids of our own, to either borrow them as an excuse to do kid-stuff, or just unashamedly do kid-stuff anyway!