author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Woke up quite late today, toddled down to the mailbox, and found my official form rejection letter from Wizards Of The Coast regarding The Drowning Boy. Reactions?

1. Darn! I could have sworn my three-chapter excerpt was irresistable!
2. Figures. My synopsis and chapter outline were teh suxx0r.
3. Whew! Now I don't have to worry about racing the phone call with my rewrite!
4. Whoo-hoo! Another number located! Mine is 166! ...I have no idea what that means.

Like I said in the AW thread, I'm going to keep working on this one through December, hoping to have the rewrite close to finished. Then in January I'm going to primarily do whatever the NaNoPubYe Plan says to do with The Golden Bridle, making sure to schedule time for other projects as well. Like short stories. And work-for-hire projects. Etc.

So. Time to hit chapter 13. More later tonight. Probably.

This is a public announcement that Chapter Twelve is done. It contains things that were not planned as part of the original chapter outline, even considering that I've diverged from the structure of the original chapter outline already anyway. There's the potential beginning of a "keep swimming or die" theme, and the achievement of oceanic satori, and a cameo by the fabled Leviathan.

Next up: A conversation with the Shark Goddess, and an interlude with Amy and Todd back on land. I'm not quite sure in which order these will appear. If one sequence doesn't work out, the other probably will.

I'm a little worried. We just met the great beast Behemoth, and now I have to establish that the Shark is in fact all that and twice the bag of chips. I mean, it's pretty easy to say "it could have eaten the Leviathan in two bites," right, but how the hell am I supposed to convince anyone of that? I mean, it would be like C. S. Lewis trying to describe Aslan after having the children meet King Kong. Divinity, yes, it's divine and all that, but we're comparing it with Frickin' Huge here.

Of course, pretty much everything seems impossible when you're sleep deprived. With your permission, I think I shall collapse now. G'night.

Another quick writing session at Cafe Bravo today after visiting Computer Renaissance. I swear, what with the ongoing saga of the dead Averatec 5100, we're all on a first name instant recognition basis at those places now. I walk into Comp Ren, and it's all like, "Good morning everybody!" from me, and "Hey Niki, you're here to see Ryan, right? Go on back," from Brian. And then I cross the street over to Bravo's, and it's all, "Hey Josh, Merry Christmas," and "Hi, another tea today for you? How's the computer doing?" Totally scary, I'm telling you.

Comp Ren: So, last week I reinstated my Thunderbird profile on the desktop in the backroom (which we playfully refer to as "ROXXOR" because of having acquired it specifically to play Guild Wars simultaneously with John--what a cruel, cruel move it is to get someone addicted to real-time gaming when all they have is a laptop). Only, all I reinstated was my Mail folder. Then I deleted the rest of it to save space. Thursday I discovered what I'd forgotten: my address book. So today I came in with the Toshiba Satellite's hard drive in the USB adapter so I could have those files copied to me again. Ryan was holding onto my backup for just this eventuality. He'd been sitting on it for a week, all 37 GBs of it. When I told him this was all, he encouraged me to take the files home and make double sure before he hit the delete key. When I did, and I imported the address book, and I called back, he was all like, "Are you sure?" Total sweetheart. Totally.

So now across the street for tea and a sausage Breggo (like a breakfast burrito, only more Italian than Mexican--more like a floury foccacia than a tortilla) and two hours of writing. I didn't quite hit Chapter 12; instead, I went back through all of Part Two up until now with a grocery list of What Changes Happen (Or Get Noticed) When. The grocery list looked something like this:

• Moon--Brian notices he can sense phase/movement of moon (tides)--
  • upon leaving Amy Friday night, moon is setting, will be down by the time we leave the shipping canal
  • it's up again when Brian runs into Alexis on the fishing boat Sunday dawn
• gradual adjustment to "seeing" mostly via ear
  • "watching" salmon swim away outside shipping canal (hearing water motion)
  • thinks mermaid's song is making an illusion of crowds, then discovers there really is a crowd of other mermaids in the big cave (hearing echoes of voices, adjusting to what the echoes mean)
• When does Brian become aware of sea's voice? (sort of a bass pulse, like what you hear underwater in a swimming pool only much much deeper)--
  • leaves shipping canal; hears relative quiet (reinforces how noisy human civilization sounds underwater), but--
  • still plenty white noise in the inhabited depths; doesn't hear sea's voice until the silence of the Shark's domain

It was the "sea's voice" stuff that got me back-tracking. I was rereading the first version of the book in order to start writing about Brian's meeting with the Shark. There always has to be a Damn Big God-Like Shark in books like these, hasn't there? I promise I am not trying to rip off Duane's Deep Wizardry, despite what it may sound like! Trying not to, anyway. Damn, but there are an awful lot of similarities. I suck. Mustn't concentrate on the suckage. Must just finish book--

Rejection letters, supposedly, went out yesterday. Or thereabouts. If I don't see anything in the mail by Tuesday, it might be a sign of That Blessed Dilemma--a request-for-full when the novel isn't finished--in which case no one will be hearing from me for about a week. As a sign that I am allowing myself to hope, no one will hear much from me tomorrow, either. Well, aside from the inevitable mass family phone call session, it being Christmas and all. Hi Mom!

So, I'm not sure how much I've said about my previous work-for-hire project (or if I ever linked to the finished product for sale over here), but it looks like I'm taking a couple more on from the same company. More will be said after completion. Actually, there will probably be some whining about it during the process, because underneath my hard-working exterior is a lazy ass trying to get out, but it will be non-identifying whining, because of confidentiality agreements, and because there's really a limit to how much whining my sense of dignity--what little of that I have--will allow me to do.

Anyway, work will start on that after Christmas day. You have been worked.

Meanwhile, I've finally finished chapter 11. All that sidling up on the story finally caught me some dinner: I've figured out how Brian manages to hold his inner beast in check for long enough at a time to interact with the mermaids at all. Without going into a lot of detail, it has to do with channeling the urge for violence through his more noble intentions. OK, that sounds kinda woo-woo, but in context it's rockin' cool. Or at least it's viable, and consistent with both character and plot. And now everyone's off to see the wizard--I mean, the shark. Big difference there. Wizard, shark. One of them sits behind a curtain and tries to scare you. The other has like a million teeth as long as your arm and doesn't have to try. Anyway, off to see the shark.

I like to say that I symbolically fill my Midwinter's Night with those things that I want filling the coming year. If that is the case, then apparently I want a year full of cooking, cleaning, rum & bourbon, too much to eat, and not a heck of a lot of productivity. But Oh Well.

Every year, on the night before Solstice Day, I stay up all night burning a Yule log and keeping the door unlocked so that friends can drop by. I bake a fruitcake and start it marinating in time to offer some to Midwinter guests. I try to follow Bridget's egg nog recipe despite my not really knowing what it means to whip egg whites and heavy cream "until fluffy"; the results tend to be scrumptious despite my ignorance. I put holly over the door and encourage Pagan friends, fellow NaNoWriMo participants, John's gaming groups, and random neighbors to drop by. And then at about 5:30 or 5:45 I take off with a car full of whoever stayed all through and we go to Red Rocks for Drumming Up The Sun.

This year is a little different, mainly because I didn't do a good job of making sure people knew what was going on and when, but also because it's a weekday. And it's mid-December, just like it is every year. Bridget helped me pick out the Yule log (heck, she totally spotted it, and then helped me lug it home), but preparations for an out-of-town stint are keeping her too busy to come over. John brought Dave over for chess, but he's gone home now. Sarah (co_butterfly) dropped by, what with already being in Boulder, but she had to get home for, y'know, sleep, what with having a full day tomorrow. Thus it's looking like there won't be a DUtS carpool, and I really don't want to drive all that way all by myself after a night of no sleep. I may just tend the fire until sunrise and then hit the sack.

It's a huge damn Yule log, by the way. I'll be surprised if it takes less than a week to burn that sucker. I've been propping up grocery store firewood against it and burning them in hopes that it will catch on and follow suit.

As for what I want to fill the year with... Well, I didn't see as much of my husband as I'd like, but it's a Tuesday, and Tuesdays are notoriously busy. We sat about five minutes in front of the fire together to show the new year willing. I also don't have a working laptop yet. My Averatec 5100 series laptop turned out to need a new motherboard, so now I'm waiting on Warranty America Corp. or whatever they're called to decide whether they'll buy me one or buy back my machine. (The latter would not be so bad. I am currently drooling over the Averatec 3225 on display today at Computer Renaissance.)

But as always I have my Ancient Decrepit Compaq. Also pens and paper. Writing is a low tech activity. Working motherboards come and go, but writing never forsakes. And I hear that WOTC's calls for full manuscripts won't go out until the first week of the new year, giving me a little more time to get out of chapter 11 and through the rest of the book. So it's off again to the races for me.

More after sunrise (and possibly some coffee). Stay tuned.

The Averatec is not yet returned from the grave, but its resurrection looms ever nearer. And before I go any further, I would like to make another shout-out, this time to Ryan, the tech at Boulder's Computer Renaissance outlet who helped me out so much today.

He called me around 1:00 this afternoon, said that after overnight testing my computer's hardware all checked out but that its WinXP system was beyond repair. He'd backed up the contents of my hard drive to the server, and everything was ready for me to pick up my computer and run the factory-provided recovery media on it.

So I did this. I walked it across the street to Cafe Bravo, ordered up some fine-tasting coffee, and began feeding CDs to the beast. Three CDs and one "Recovery Successful!" screen later, I was growling. That computer just wasn't booting up. It was doing stuff that looked remarkably like Monday afternoon's original breakdown. So back to CompRen I went.

Turns out that they'd tested the hard drive, but not the RAM. The RAM got tested forthwith. Even more forthwither, the RAM failed. Ah-ha. So out comes one stick. The remaining one tested good. The sticks got swapped. The other stick tested good. Both sticks back in. Again, test good. Ah-ha? Ryan ran through the recovery media, and this time met with success. Sometimes, apparently, connector pins can get oxidized, and all we have to do is wiggle the sticks, take them out and put them back in again maybe, and things will be fine. An hour later, my backed-up data had been copied onto the newly formatted machine, and I was on my way home. And either because it was a physical problem which means my extended warranty covers the labor, or because Ryan and CompRen are just that nice, I wasn't charged a cent.

Well, I got home. And I started up the computer. I did some preliminary customizing--downloading and installing Firefox, connecting to the home network and its workgroup, swapping the keyboard input default over to Dvorak. Then I started a blog entry.

Then I was staring into the Blue Screen Of Death. Of Physical Memory Dump, anyway.

Er.

I have not yet tried wiggling the RAM sticks, but I have tried rebooting. It went very soon into the deadly spiral of aborted startup attempts. I stopped it before it could start deleting sectors again. As far as I'm concerned, it's still dead.

But! My time today was fruitful in other ways. I got to watch Ryan take my hard drive and my RAM out of my laptop, which meant I learned for the first time just how easy it is to do. I mean, you just unscrew these panels and out they come! Which means any schmoe can do it! Even me! And they sell these $40 devices which turn your laptop hard drive into a USB jump drive in, like, seconds. So I think I can at least go buy one of those (or a suitable cable, $10-ish, for daisy-chaining the drive onto another computer) so I can move my data onto one of the home desktops. Then I could have access to my saved emails and address book and all (not to mention the latest changes to Becoming Sara Peltier), by tomorrow afternoon, even though Ryan won't be back in the shop to look at my flailing laptop beastie until Tuesday.

So life isn't so bad after all.

Meanwhile, I logged another half-hour on The Drowning Boy during my second stint at Cafe Bravo's, the one during which data was being copied back onto my laptop. I managed a few more paragraphs on chapter 11. I feel like I'm sneaking up this story, sort of sidling up to it by describing this or that character's feelings, bodily posture, snippets of dialogue. Sometimes that's the only way to find out what the story's doing.

Heck with it.

The Averatec laptop is in the shop. Its Windows XP install proved too far gone to repair. An attempt to load a new XP installation over the top (which, if successful, would have allowed me to boot up and actually get to my files) failed to the tune of "Cannot install. C:\ is corrupted." So here I wait, twiddling my thumbs, hoping that the files I was able to see on the disk during a CD boot to DOS operation are indeed recoverable.

And the novel? Apparently I hadn't backed it up once since beginning to work on it this month. Didn't back up a copy of the new chapter outline last week after the IHOP session. Didn't upload to the web server a copy of the novel after working on it in Indiana. I'm a ditz. A total ditz.

So I could continue working on it now, just leave a blank line with a ### in it to mark where the temporarily (knock on wood) unavailable version of the manuscript had progressed, but...

Heck with it.

There is no way that Becoming Sara Peltier would be ready for submission in the next week even if my laptop hadn't taken a nose dive. No, that's OK--Delacorte's Press Contest for a First Young Adult Novel is just going to go another year without my manuscript among its contestants.

Meanwhile, word on the street is that I'll hear one way or another about The Drowning Boy by the end of the month. And that novel was backed up along with everything else shortly after November ended. Copied to ZIP drive, burned to CD, the works. So. Today I dove back into it. When we last left Brian, he had finally met the mermaids. Things were very tense. I'd been uncertain how to get the tension to shift so that the story could continue--I sort of had him all curled up in a floating ball of used-to-be-human misery amidst personal demons and suchlike. But tonight, hanging out at the downtown Borders while my husband browsed the aisles, I finally had a spark that just might lead to the end of chapter 11. So that's all better.

So there's the novelling side of things. Back over on the technical difficulties side, I wanna give a shout out to Ken. He used to be a tech for Computer Renaissance back when I bought this Averatec and had the data recovered off the fatally flawed Toshiba Satellite. Now he's working down the street from me at PC Express. He took time out of a morning full of 'xtreme custom computer building to totally hold my hand through the Windows XP repair attempts. He knew I'd have to take it away to Comp Ren because of them holding my 3-year extended warranty--heck, he encouraged me to take it over there--but he took the time to help me out and provide moral support anyway. Damn cool guy, that Ken. You should totally haul your boxes over to PC Express for upgrades and give him some business.

(And super-duper thanks to Willow for pointing me in Ken's direction!)

It is now officially November, and now I have a word count. We had a Countdown To Word One House Party. CO_Butterfly came over, and my husband, AKA Worldnamer, pulled out his ancient decrepit Compaq (yes, we both have ancient decrepit Compaqs--mine's more ancient but less decrepit, haha), and we got to work. Well, we sort of worked. We also did a lot of chatting and goofing off. Sarah and Bridget were over for Halloween/Samhain goodness, moral support, and, well, just to be NaNoWriMo groupies.

Dude. Boulder is so hoppin', we have NaNoWriMo groupies.

(And no, that short story did not get written in time to submit. But, oh well. It'll still get written. I'm sure I'll find somewhere else that will publish an Adam & Eve spec fic story.)

As for that other novel, I had a dream last night. I had this weird dream wherein I was in the New Orleans area, at my parents' house, and going swimming at the neighbor's house every morning while the neighbor rode a bicycle around the bottom of the swimming pool... none of which is actually the point, because the point is that in the dream I got a call from Wizards of the Coast, which happened to be headquartered right there in Metairie. And they said, "We totally want to publish your book. How soon can you bring the full manuscript by?" And I said, "Dude! Right now!" And I brought it. And it was on this sort of old tape backup drive, and they were having trouble getting the file off the drive, and so I finally said, "Well, y'know, that isn't actually the real manuscript anyway... I'll bring you the real one in a day or two." I didn't want to admit that I hadn't actually finished the publishable draft. But the editor totally caught on and gave me this sort of pity hug like she was about to break the news to me that she wasn't going to buy my book anyway...

So. Yeah. I'll be doing both novels this November. And did I mention that I still haven't finished and submitted that other other novel? *Sigh*

Not that having too much writing to do is the worst of fates, or anything...

Woo! Two concerts to report on. Feels like lots and lots more. Here we go.

Trippin Billies, Tuesday night: You know, I think I had more fun listening to this cover band at the Fox than I did at the actual Dave Matthews Band show at Jazz Fest 2005. The Fox was less crowded; I had somewhere to sit; and I was so close to the stage that I kept getting looks from the lead guitarist and from the violinist, as much as to say, "You're really into it, aren't you? Or maybe you're just insane?"

For me, there were two highlights of the evening. Most noticeably there was the violinist's solo. He sampled each riff he played into a repeating loop until by the time he was done he was playing with an entire orchestra of himself. More subtlely, there was the moment when the singer stopped pinching his voice in an attempt to sound more like Dave Matthews his-own-self, and just relaxed and sang like someone with a damn fine singing voice.

It isn't actually that hard to be a Dave Matthews cover band, as long as you can find a versatile saxophonist and a super-human violinist. And it helps if your vocalist has about a three octave range. Nothing to it, if you've got all that. Then you just play the songs, and no one cares whether you're actually the Real Thing or not, because the songs are so very happy-making. Me, I have about three or four songs I absolutely love, and all the rest of the songs I don't know all that well but I still want to just pick them up and hug them. Look, there's enough doom and gloom in the world; we need music that's life-affirming as much as we need cathartic wails and politically aware dirges. The latter has its place, but sometimes you just need to swing-dance, or smile wistfully, or jump up and down and clap your hands and sing.

Dresden Dolls et. al., Wednesday night: Which is to say, Dresden Dolls but also openers Faun Fables and Devotchka, and an unexpected burlesque-style strip tease in between the two opening acts, making the show feel like a classic variety show.

Faun Fables turned out to be a solo act, a lady in "Mediterranean pirate" garb who accompanied herself on guitar or with a complex percussive stomping dance of her high-heeled boots while she sang folk ballads, ancient Greek chants, and compositions of her own. The climax of her set was a melencholy lament during which photographs were lovingly displayed by candlelight, and at last the singer transformed herself into a framed photograph too.

Devotchka were a quartet playing music that sounded like a mix of Slavik and Latin on drum, upright bass or tuba (flugelhorn?) depending on which instrument that musician picked up, guitar, violin, and this weird old-time thing consisting of a miked up wooden speaker box with an antenna sticking up which the guitarist would jiggle to make a sound like a musical saw. Their act had a lot of energy. There'd have been more dancing if people weren't jammed in shoulder to shoulder.

As for the strip tease, what's to say? The music was "Experience Unecessary" and the stripper was wearing purple pasties with blue glitter.

Which brings us to Dresden Dolls. I had never actually heard them before, barring one song that Cate played for John and me. They did in fact play that song, "Coin-Operated Boy," complete with the "record skipping" effect halfway through, which was absolutely amazing to watch. The technical skill involved in that trick is nothing to sneeze at, and that skill was in evidence all through the show.

There was a very Tori Amos element to the lyrics, an emotional rawness unafraid to put itself in semi-shocking terms. A lot of black humor. A lot of cleverness that makes you laugh before you realize you've been handed a grenade. (Note to the audience: You know that song with the verses about sitting by the window in the morning and masturbating? If your only reaction was to fantasize lewdly about the singer, you weren't paying attention.) It was the kind of concert where I was glad to have someone I loved holding me. Some of those songs really hurt. But I'd still go see them all over again tonight and tomorrow and again if I could.

Besides the fantastic "record skipping" thing, there was the sorta-kinda duelling pianos bit (only of course it was one piano versus one set of drums) when she said to him, "It's so hard to take you seriously in that dress." There was "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" peformed by the keyboardist on the drums and the drummer on distorted acoustic guitar. There was the anecdote about how female musicians might respond when male fans yell "I want to have your baby!" (Someone yelled that at Faun Fables, too; she just said, "That would save me a lot of work, wouldn't it?")

And then there was me totally forgetting to pick up any CDs before I left, dangnabit! Guess I have some internet shopping to do.

And of course that's not even to mention the mountain flying cross-country I finally flew yesterday, or the progress on the novel, or how I might have to take a few days off from the novel in order to stay on track with the work-for-hire gig. Meh! More later, therefore.

Look, all I've had is one stinking martini. One! Stupid! Stoli's! Martini! Why the hell do I feel so damn drunk? I swear, it's like I'm getting whiplash trying to turn my head fast enough to catch up with my head turning. At which point all my thoughts but one fall out of my head. I hate being drunk. Maybe next time my martini ought to be an Absolut?

I'm at The Fox. I won me a Golden Ticket! Do you wanna win a Golden Ticket? Then you wanna get you on the mailing list. Sometimes they have these little trivia contests, and if you answer correctly, you get your name put in the hat, and then maybe they pull your name out of the hat. Apparently that's what happened, so I get to see Trippin Billies for free.

Trippin Billies is, as the name perhaps suggests, a Dave Matthews cover band. From Chicago. I can't tell you much about them except that they're currently setting up the stage. But I just had a lot of fun with the opening act, who I believe called themselves "GreenField". Their drummer was insane; their singer, however, was uninspiring. Still, somewhere in between, their lead guitarist was hitting all those riffs and harmonics that make the rock 'n roller in your soul lose its little mind. Much fun. Totally adequate. And I'm the drunk little so-n-so at the very stage-right verge of the wall-side rail bouncing around like a spaz and singing like she thinks she's some sort of back-up soprano vocalist.

(Well, I'm also the one with the computer. Duh.)

It's amazing I'm not committing more typos then I am.

Anyway. About the novel. Coral reefs? Apparently they happen in shallow, tropical waters. I'm not sure I'm allowed to have my mermaids living in a coral reef, therefore. *Sigh*

PS. Apparently, "Lighting Guys Do It On Cue." Hey, don't ask me, I didn't name the SSID.

PPS. Tomorrow, the Fox again! Dresden Dolls. Oh yeah.