dancinghorse (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dancinghorse) wrote2012-01-09 09:54 am
dancinghorse) wrote2012-01-09 09:54 am
Monday Morning, with Mother Stones
...which turned up all over the place this morning. Create! Make! Write write write!
But as always, Life wants to interveneth. We are emerging from an unusually busy (in a predominantly good way) holiday, and I spent last week recharging and rebooting. December was a long rush of work, family, Camp, and Weather. The last meant much rain, much cold, much mud, and nonstop Blanket Brigade. Some days they never got out of blankets at all, and when they did, there were many pounds of muddy, sloppy fabric to haul and hang and clean. Riding got very short shrift, and even groundwork fell off the radar for days at a time.
I did try to keep up with Pooka's PT. He's still not up to being ridden; whatever he tweaked in there was deep, and is taking a long time to resolve. He had another massage session, which made him very happy, and S called him a "brave little pony," which he was. Now he gets PT in some form every day: groundwork, in-hand work, and exercises to help him get his back end back in gear. He seems to be at a standstill, but I have noticed a slow return of muscle tone here and there.
In the meantime Capria is demanding the bulk of my time. So is Ephiny, who will go back under saddle very shortly, and Gabriella, who is quite insistent. And Tia, of course. Tia is starting to think she should get serious about this, now she's worn a saddle and everything.
Everybody got a chance to show off at December Camp, which happened very quickly; I had basically ten days to put it together, but the Campers have been here many times before and it was simply a matter of making up a grocery list, cleaning the heck out of the house, and letting it happen.
It was a yoga intensive this time, with S clinic in addition (when Pooka got his massage). Very interesting. Good time for all.
As soon as the Campers left--same day, later in the day--![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
smoemeth arrived for the holidays. And that began the family part of the adventure. I spent nearly a week at my mom's, sleeping in and being social, and it was a very good break from the farm. Highlights of the holiday lootfest were the Star Wars cook's apron, complete with appliqued Storm Trooper helmet, and the package of S lessons, which I will be using as soon as Ephiny is ready to get back to saddle work.
Also during all this, through the good offices of the co-op at Book View Cafe, we brought out Lord of the Two Lands as an ebook (which I put on Kindle and the Nook thereafter). And I kept doing the Horseblog--have one today, in fact. The current line of discussion--worldbuilding with horses--seems to be turning into a blog series, which means it will end up being another ebook.
Now all that is done and we're on the long road down through another year. I don't do resolutions, but I do have goals. I want to ride more. Write more. Use my time more wisely. I'm hoping to get more ebooks up from the backlist--I have a promise to keep to several fans--and am working with BVC on an actual, new, original book. It got to the "editors love it, sales force can't make sense of it" stage several times, and YA agent finally gave me her blessing to take it indie.
Because, when I'm loose on the world and not being smacked into compliance by agents or editors with contracts in hand, I have this...little issue with boundaries. Genre boundaries, to be precise. The book is sf. And fantasy. And contemporary. And historical. Also, YA.
In short--a perfect project for Book View Cafe, which lives to experiment. So I've got my editorial letter, and am at the stalking warily around the ms., sniffing, occasionally nipping, and snarling to myself stage. Which soon will become the typing frantically (and still snarling) stage.
Which goes along with Sekrit Projekt. Also, a podcast at Escape Pod this week, which I found about last week. Should go up later in the week.
I manage to keep busy.
Oh, and Camp? Have openings for February, and for March which will be part of a week-long yoga-horses-writing retreat with Desert Horse Yoga and the Inn at Civano. April's booked. June's booked. Latter half of May is open. If you've been thinking about trying it, now's the time. The weather is usually lovely in the winter and spring. All the rain in the fall and early winter should give us spectacular wildflowers starting late in February. And besides, Lipizzans. And all the other Cool Stuff.
But as always, Life wants to interveneth. We are emerging from an unusually busy (in a predominantly good way) holiday, and I spent last week recharging and rebooting. December was a long rush of work, family, Camp, and Weather. The last meant much rain, much cold, much mud, and nonstop Blanket Brigade. Some days they never got out of blankets at all, and when they did, there were many pounds of muddy, sloppy fabric to haul and hang and clean. Riding got very short shrift, and even groundwork fell off the radar for days at a time.
I did try to keep up with Pooka's PT. He's still not up to being ridden; whatever he tweaked in there was deep, and is taking a long time to resolve. He had another massage session, which made him very happy, and S called him a "brave little pony," which he was. Now he gets PT in some form every day: groundwork, in-hand work, and exercises to help him get his back end back in gear. He seems to be at a standstill, but I have noticed a slow return of muscle tone here and there.
In the meantime Capria is demanding the bulk of my time. So is Ephiny, who will go back under saddle very shortly, and Gabriella, who is quite insistent. And Tia, of course. Tia is starting to think she should get serious about this, now she's worn a saddle and everything.
Everybody got a chance to show off at December Camp, which happened very quickly; I had basically ten days to put it together, but the Campers have been here many times before and it was simply a matter of making up a grocery list, cleaning the heck out of the house, and letting it happen.
It was a yoga intensive this time, with S clinic in addition (when Pooka got his massage). Very interesting. Good time for all.
As soon as the Campers left--same day, later in the day--
smoemeth arrived for the holidays. And that began the family part of the adventure. I spent nearly a week at my mom's, sleeping in and being social, and it was a very good break from the farm. Highlights of the holiday lootfest were the Star Wars cook's apron, complete with appliqued Storm Trooper helmet, and the package of S lessons, which I will be using as soon as Ephiny is ready to get back to saddle work. Also during all this, through the good offices of the co-op at Book View Cafe, we brought out Lord of the Two Lands as an ebook (which I put on Kindle and the Nook thereafter). And I kept doing the Horseblog--have one today, in fact. The current line of discussion--worldbuilding with horses--seems to be turning into a blog series, which means it will end up being another ebook.
Now all that is done and we're on the long road down through another year. I don't do resolutions, but I do have goals. I want to ride more. Write more. Use my time more wisely. I'm hoping to get more ebooks up from the backlist--I have a promise to keep to several fans--and am working with BVC on an actual, new, original book. It got to the "editors love it, sales force can't make sense of it" stage several times, and YA agent finally gave me her blessing to take it indie.
Because, when I'm loose on the world and not being smacked into compliance by agents or editors with contracts in hand, I have this...little issue with boundaries. Genre boundaries, to be precise. The book is sf. And fantasy. And contemporary. And historical. Also, YA.
In short--a perfect project for Book View Cafe, which lives to experiment. So I've got my editorial letter, and am at the stalking warily around the ms., sniffing, occasionally nipping, and snarling to myself stage. Which soon will become the typing frantically (and still snarling) stage.
Which goes along with Sekrit Projekt. Also, a podcast at Escape Pod this week, which I found about last week. Should go up later in the week.
I manage to keep busy.
Oh, and Camp? Have openings for February, and for March which will be part of a week-long yoga-horses-writing retreat with Desert Horse Yoga and the Inn at Civano. April's booked. June's booked. Latter half of May is open. If you've been thinking about trying it, now's the time. The weather is usually lovely in the winter and spring. All the rain in the fall and early winter should give us spectacular wildflowers starting late in February. And besides, Lipizzans. And all the other Cool Stuff.
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Good to hear that Pooka is doing well.
I am always thinking about horse camp (though if it gets to 80 degrees regularly -- and I suspect you get far hotter -- I would fall over).
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Without the humidity, 80 degrees is wonderful. Soft and warm but not hot. It gets hot above 90. Which we see along about April, and we're in triple digits through the summer.
The trick is plenty of water. Shade. Siesta. And the nights are glorious even in the dead of summer.
But! winter is lovely. It's 53F here right now (a little before noon). Nights in the 30s. That's the time to come. November through early April.
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PO Box 429, Vail, AZ 85641
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Kudos for breaking the rules.
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I have a real problem staying within boundaries, and readers ream me for it even more than editors etc. do. I could never do genre romance, for example. I slide endlessly through fantasy and sf and never take the "right" directions. Writing trilogies has proved to be a bad idea. I'll do OK with the first or second volume, but then in the third I'll blow up expectations. And readers get really, really mad.
It's a contract implied by the genre label. Lester del Rey told me a long time ago, when I sent him my very first novel (long since buried in the archives), "Fantasy readers seem willing to take some science fiction with their fantasy, but science fiction readers do not return the favor." Bye-bye genre-bending epic-fantasy space opera. (The Avaryan books are a prequel to this.)(Yes. They're science fiction.)(No, you didn't realize that, did you?)
So now I've got a YA that's three different genres. Editors really liked it. Couldn't get marketing to sign off on it. Enter Book View Cafe. It's a brave new world, baby.
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Have lived too long with the literal (i.e. not figurative,non-interpretive, closed) mind, that to label and categorize EVERYTHING just makes me want to SCREAM!
Must be why I am a fan of your writing -- it isn't 'safe.'
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Pretty much, yeah.
Interestingly, I found this article (http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/slj/printissue/currentissue/893042-427/what_teens_are_really_reading.html.csp#.Tws2H69mTjF.facebook) right after I posted the above. I would still speculate that I'm not bending the "right" genres, but it's interesting that younger readers are looking for things that blur the lines. I guess I never grew out of it. :P
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is this the YA one I saw?