Bethanie's Brain

by Cindy Lynn Speer A beautifully sweet story (pun unashamedly intended). OK, leaving aside the fact that anything having to do with chocolate is almost automatically certain to be a hit with me, this really was a great story. Set in a world far, far away where marriages are 'arranged' by magic and one's mate is usually determined when one is very young, the story consists partly of letters written back and forth between William and his 'intended', Tasmin, over the course of the time before they meet and partly of the 'present day', in which William has been framed for murder and Tamsin comes to free him, since she knows from his letters that he's no murderer. Their letters to each other alone are a good enough reason to read the book. They are charming and cleverly written, not only because they subtly reveal the nature of each of the main characters, but also because they evolve through the story, moving along from the first letter William writes as a ...

OK, this will be brief, but this is an issue that really burns me up. I got an email in my Inbox this morning from Wiley-Blackwell, publishers of all sorts of books. I'm on some mailing list they have and get these periodically -- it's basically an ad for news books. I don't mind it, because I love any and all forms of books. Including eBooks. Typically, the actual content of these ads don't interest me enough to click through, but this one caught my eye. So I clicked. I salivated over the Description. I drooled over the Table of Contents. I frowned at the price tag. And then I saw this: Other Available Formats: Adobe E-Book I cheered! I clicked! I had a small myocardial infarction at the price of the E-Book -- which was the same as the fucking hard copy!!! What. The. Hell. Seriously?? You're going to charge me $45 for a fucking computer file ?? GET WITH THE PROGRAM, PEOPLE!!! It costs you almost nothing to produce a PDF file. Yes, OK -- you have to recover the cos...

I'm not even sure I can write a proper blog post anymore. It has been so long -- and I am now so used to teensy missives such as will fit into my Facebook status without generating a nastygram -- that I'm not sure I'm actually capable of anything else. So we shall just have to see how long this lasts... Anyway, Anatomy & Physiology is over. I passed. More importantly, I learned a hell of a lot and feel a lot more confident in my ability to NOT introduce mistakes when I edit medical documents (a huge fear). So that is good. However, I have decided NEVER to take another class during the fall. With NaNo and then the holidays, it's just too nuts. I'm sure I'll have to eat that 'never', if I ever do get into grad school, but for now, when I'm just putzing around doing whatever the hell I want -- Fall is For Fun. Spring is for classes. Except for this spring. Because I need a fucking break after that hellacious fall.... heh... I mean, I really SHOULD t...

Oh, my, has it ever been an age since I posted... well, you know the story. Busy, busy, busy... Anyway, against my better judgement, I'm doing NaNo again this year. But just for the insanity part. :D My villain just did away with her first victim, and I thought I'd share. Enjoy the evil! ************* At first, he thought she’d missed, because he didn’t feel anything. But she wasn't acting like she had missed. She was just sitting there. Watching him. And looking thoughtful. Then he saw something drooping down into his field of vision from above. He could barely see it if he crossed his eyes and looked up, but there appeared to be a miniature dart embedded in his forehead. “What the… what is that?” he asked, his voice sounding far away. Wynonna gave him a thoughtful, assessing gaze that sent chills down his spine. Or maybe that was something in the dart. It was hard to say really. Finally, she answered him. “A prototype.” And that was the last thing he heard before the dar...

Yeah, yeah. It's been a while. I'd launch a volley of excuses, but I don't have time. xD And that's the whole story of late. I've never been so busy in my life. Between kids, work, the official and suprisingly successful launch of the freelance biz, kids' school, my school, etc, etc, writing has suffered. There's a project in the works, but it's slow going. Most nights I have freelance jobs to work on, and by the time I'm done with those, the poor little brain is shot. And I don't even want to talk about my goddamn kitchen sink (which is usually full of dirty dishes that no one but me seems to know what to do with....). Oh, well. My only goal for writing this year, I've decided, is to finish One Thing. Just one single project. Get it done to the point where I would let someone else read it. I'm hoping it's going to be the project I'm working on, but I don't know. It's taking me back to a time in my life that I'd rathe...

Ah, yes, well part of it anyway. Do not be deceived by its present length -- I expect it to expand. (And please feel free to suggest stories, books, tales, sagas, etc. that you loved or have heard were really great.) Anyway, The Plan - and I have to have A Plan, because if left to my own devices, I will read nothing but fantasy - is to alternate a fiction with a non-fiction. Why not just give in and stick with fantasy and nothing but fantasy? Well, I could do that. But I really want to read the non-fiction on my list and in order to do that I have to set up the fiction books as Rewards for reading the non-fiction, because otherwise all the shiny fiction will somehow find its way to the top of the pile and then it will be September and summer will be over and I'll still have a stack of non-fiction sitting there forlornly beckoning... You think I'm kidding? Exhibit No. 1: Let's take the Oliver Sacks book, Uncle Tungsten . I think I bought it at Christmas, which means I...

I know. It's still spring. But my final exam is Monday, which means summer starts for me as soon as I hit "Submit Quiz", get the news, and calculate my final grade. :D And I am So Fucking Sick of cramming my brain full of stuff I have to know, that I have actually formulated a plan to spend all summer cramming it full of stuff I want to know just 'cuz . Specifically, I am talking about Bethanie's Fantastic Summer Reading List . Yaay for summers!! Yaay for reading!! I plan to post The Official List here and check in with it and check things off and comment and review and contemplate and theorize and otherwise generally wallow shamelessly in my neglected and now-towering TBR pile. So. Be looking for the Fantastic List sometime next week and feel free to suggest any Must Reads on your Fantastic Summer (or Other) Reading List in the meantime (since I just know you're sitting there on the edge of your seat with nothing better to do...). And we now return you ...

It's here! It's here!! IT'S HERE!!! Witch Ember is here! It arrived this afternoon and I was so busy I never even checked the mailbox, and was shocked and delighted when The Husband brought it in this evening. Yahoo! I'm delivering it straight to the TBR pile. I'm gonna be good -- I'm not even gonna crack the cover, 'cuz I'm not allowed to read it until after my final on May 4th and I don't want to be tempted and .... Say! Check out those maps!! Uh-oh... .

So a friend at work sent me a link to this blog and it's so damn amusing, I added it to my list of Distractions & Addictions. It's called Cake Wrecks and it's all about... well, let's just say the title is self explanatory... It's been a great stress reliever over the past few weeks of family, family, wedding, school, work, family, family, OMG- more -family. In a word (or two) it's fucking hysterical. You must check it out! 'Cuz I said so! Back to searching the archives for the Pepto-Bismal Barbie cake I made for Ms. Six when she turned Ms. Four (or was it Ms. Three...). Heh. No, seriously. Anyway, enjoy y'all! .

I did it. I had to. I couldn't stand it anymore. John Lawson's Witch Ember just sounds too awesome, and it finally popped up used on Amazon at a price I could afford, so I raided the emergency funds (books are an emergency, yes?) and ordered it. So there. And so what if I won't have time to read it until after my effing A&P class comes to its gruesome and excruciating end in May. And so what if my freelance workload is scheduled to pick up right about then. And so what if my stack of Absolutely-Positively-Must-Read-This-Summer books is already taller than I am. So what! Witch Ember goes to the top of the stack as soon as it arrives, and if it's here, it gets cracked open the minute I'm done taking my final on May 4th. So there! .

First, The Usual Warning – probably, I am not going to do this review thing right. My 'reviews' are more a part of my own learning process as a writer than 'proper reviews’ in the traditional sense. They are more my ruminations, more my thoughts on and reactions to stories I either read or watch (yanno, movies), and more my attempt to process - mainly for my own benefit - the techniques and bits of craft that I most admired (or that didn’t seem to work for me). For that reason, it isn’t enough for me to say ‘I liked it’; I need to think about and say exactly why, so I get very specific. Oh, and sorry about all the italics and bold and bold-italics in this one. I went sorta wild with it... There. You have been warned. :) On to Sorrow , by John Lawson ! * * * I'm not going to begin with a synopsis or blurb of the plot. I think that's boring. Sorry. I'll tell you there's an assassin and nobody knows who it is, but they need to find out before more people d...

OK, so it's been a while since I last posted. But we are drowning here. Drowing in more ways than one. Drowning in life due to soccer, school events, and life events (we have a family wedding this weekend, so everyone's in town and wants to visit). Drowing in resposibilities at the Evil Day Job, which is getting perpetually stranger every single day... Oh, yes. And it's raining. It's been raining all week. We're supposed to have "possibly severe thunderstorms" today (so the wedding won't be outside this afternoon; poor sister-in-law-to-be :( And actually, we get a break from drowning in soccer today, since the fields are closed, which is good since because of the wedding we'd have been running around like crazy all day. This way we're only running around like crazy half the day....) I don't even want to talk about school - my school - and the test I have tomorrow and how I haven't even read the chapter yet, let alone done any studyi...

So The Husband and I got to go on one of our very rare movie dates this afternoon and picked Watchmen. Yaay for the small miracle of movie dates! Almost 30 bucks and 3 hours later, I'm still sort of shell shocked. It was violent. It was graphic. It was gory. It had waaay too many flashbacks and moved waaay slower than I would normally tolerate and yet I've come away from it thinking it was great. I'm struggling to put my finger on why. I mean, normally any movie that moves that slow has me yawning, bored and pissed off that I just spent 30 bucks to be bored halfway through and hoping it will end. Watchmen somehow eluded this fate. I think there are a number of reasons for this. For one thing, there was a giant, blue man walking around totally naked for most of the movie. Two thumbs, way up! ;-D Seriously, though... The characters had enough depth to keep me interested. Maybe not as much as I usually like, but there were interesting internal conflicts going on. There were...

So a few weeks back a Big Editing Company notified me that they wanted to hire me as a freelance editor, but didn't want me to edit in the field where I actually have editing experience -- they wanted me to edit in the field I have a degree in, even though I haven't done THING ONE in that field for 14 years. I didn't know what to tell them because I was so irritated with their lack of respect for the actual work that I DO and their apparent faith in a piece of paper given to me by my undergraduate university so long ago that it is now lost in the mists of time. So I did what came natually: I ignored them. Yesterday they emailed me back, ever so politely requesting that I send them the other stuff they need for me to start editing for them and again suggesting that I edit in that other field. Perhaps they're hard up for editors in that particular field. I don't know, I don't really care, and my inclination is to ignore them again. However. Drollerie Press ha...

Or: Maybe Not. So I decided last night that I was done. After reading so many good books lately while occasionally glancing at my growing pile of pathetic, feeble - and entirely unfinished - attempts at writing, I just gave up. "Fuck writing," I said. "I'm all done. I'll just read from now on. And edit. And maybe review some stuff." As I left the house at 6 AM this morning, I was resigned to just driving. No more plotting on the commute. No more conversations with my characters during the inevitable stop 'n' go near Trinity Lane. No more feeding Dorothy the Muse with my new favorite song while going 80 in the slow lane. Just no more. Dorothy apparently took offense at this decision and smacked me upside the head continuously the whole way to work with all kinds of things I've been stonewalled on for the past several weeks. Figures. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I may just ignore it and go ahead with the plan to take up s...

So Fictionwise - and it's little brother eReader.com - have been acquired by B&N apparently. I've been an eReader.com customer for ... well, a really, really long time. For me, the initial draw to ebooks was based on 1) convenience (lots of books available all the time, all in my purse on an itty-bitty reading device), 2) ease of storage (ebooks take up no physical space - a good thing in a small house), and 3) PRICE. PRICE was the big one (that's why it's in caps, heh-heh). Ebooks, back in the day, were cheaper than regular books (paperbacks or hardcover). The people who produced ebooks seemed to understand that since they aren't having to cover the cost of paper, printing, shipping, storage, etc., it ultimately costs them less to produce an ebook and hey, why not pass that savings on to readers. OK, yes, sure - they have to maintain servers and websites and such, but these days, most booksellers have to do that anyway. The price has gone up over the years,...

... every time I HAVE time to write, I find a 1001 other things to do instead and ... every time I'm up to my eyeballs in everything else, all I want to do is write? Why is that, huh?

I really have nothing to say, but I haven't been writing-writing much lately, since I'm deep in the thinking part of Think Sideways and/or otherwise occupying the brain with kids, food, laundry (and more laundry!), other people's writing, and various body parts (anatomy & physiology, people! heads out of gutters, please...), so my fingers are itchy and I'm here to scratch them, I guess. Anyway, I spent the entire weekend unplugged. I never even took my laptop out of the backpack I use to haul it to and from work-work. It was kind of nice. I got to sit in different chairs (our wireless router died 2 years ago and we haven't replaced it yet, so being online means being chained to my desk with a little blue cable...). I got to read One for the Money by Janet Evanovitch . Never read anything by her and it was GREAT! Especially as a study in characterization. Seriously. I think it was some part of Joely's Character Clinic that mentioned if you can remove all...

OK, I can tell from the way my face is breaking out that I am PMS-ing and it is, therefore, entirely possible that I am not being completely rational. That out of the way: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!!???!!!!!!!! Honestly. All I want to do is set up my freelance editing business and edit stuff that I want to edit. Is that so hard? It seems to be. Here's the sordid story: I'm trying to set up a contract with a company in a non-English speaking country and can't seem to get them to understand that while, yes, I have a degree in a certain social science, I do not really consider myself qualified to edit in that field because I have done nothing in it for the last FOURTEEN YEARS . Meanwhile, I have oodles and oodles of experience editing in certain areas of biomedical research, areas in which I have undertaken a great deal of training, formal and informal, but which apparently - because I have no piece of paper to declare me competent in that area - counts for nothin...

I thought the Character Clinic (CC101) Joely hosted over the weekend was fabulous! Even though I didn't win anything, I learned a ton about how to build characters and what I like about them - among many other things. And it's the "other things" that, for some reason, are really churning around in the ol' brain right now. Two interesting things occurred as a strangely direct result of CC101. One, I'm not prepared to discuss yet. It's still churning, and it ain't turned to butter yet... The other is the big one for me (a big pain in the ass, that is...): theme. Stories have themes. They just do. Any good story worth the paper or pixels it's printed on, anyway, has a theme, an overriding, overarching thread of wisdom that guides the ultimate outcome. That's how I define it for myself, anyway. I flat-out SUCK at theme in my own writing. There are reasons for this. First of all, I blame the fact that as a reader, I don't like to analyze. ...