Tuesday, December 30, 2003I don't know.
I think I was fourteen when we got her. Well, got might not be the right word. She was dumped off in front of our house, in the middle of March, and it was rainy, and it was cold, and she huddled against the chimney and shivered. We tried to ignore her. Our beloved Max had only died a week before, if that. But she was tiny, and pathetic, and we took her in. Our first female dog. She was black, and so we named her Nia, which is, in an African dialect, the word for black.
And now she's sick. And I'm waiting for her to die.
I hate it. I don't like it. The vet wants to put her to sleep. She's been sick, on an off for awhile. Bed sores. Worms. Hacking coughs. And I've fought and fought. Now she doesn't want to eat, and her back legs don't work. I carry her around and she's light, like so many sticks loosly bundled together. And I won't put her to sleep.
You may hate me for it. But I don't know. Don't we fight for every breath? For every hour? And so I carry her to her house in the morning. I put her water and whatever meat I'm hoping will tempt her near by. I carry her back into the shop, into the warm at night. I muck out her house and put in fresh hay.
Next motrning, repeat. Clean up the hay from the shop floor. If it's too cold I simply move her until I can put down clean hay. she'd rather be outside. She always liked it better, out. She could hardly be contained, before this...even the coldest nights she'd fuss and tear around, wanting to be in her home, in her bed. Sometimes I listened, sometimes I looked at the thermometer and told her she'd just have to settle herself.
So I wait.
What you do? She can't tell you if she hurts. If she wants to be let go. So you check on her often, and you wonder what it'll be like, if she's gone, and you're relived when she isn't. You pound dry dogfood into pieces and mix it with other dog food. You heat gravy in the microwave. You cut up leftovers into tiny pieces, hoping one of these things she'll eat. And you know that if she doesn't start moving soon, that you'll be digging a hole in frozen ground, as cold as your heart, and you'll be feeling stupid because it's only a dog, even though you know, you're praying maybe you'll see her again.
And you don't know whether to pray or not, really. Do my prayers keep her when she shouldn't be kept? Do dogs even get into heaven, or are the reincarnzated, over and over, each of us seeking what we loved in a silent creatures eyes?
You might be wondering if this isn't something to take up with a Christian group, but I don't think so. Why? None of us know. We only know what makes us able to go on. What we want to know.
Maybe I;m making a lot out of nothing. But it's late, and I'm cold, and I know I have to go check the fire, and I'm dreading it.
But I'll go. I'll go and see.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 10:15 PM
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Sunday, December 28, 2003I'll be undergoing MAJOR site reconstruction over the next several days. This will mean that most of the site will no longer function...I'm deleting files, reorganizing, etc. This part, since it's run my blogger, will remain unaffected.
When I come back, Lord willing, all the sections will be updated with more information/links, the book reviews section and all of my articles and interviews will be up. I want to try and do this now, and do it right, while I'm "off". I'll be editing one book, that's all the regular awork I'll be doing...and reading, because I can't seem to stop myself.
Wish me luck. I hope this doesn't turn into a huge mess that makes me wish I'd never been born...
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 2:11 PM
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Tuesday, December 23, 2003No, really, *I* did change my works page. It's just not showing up. My new bio page is showing up (I'm thinking of changing it again...I hate bio pages. You want to give some information, but not sound like a git.)
I've tried all sorts of things, but it's still showing the old works page. So until I do something else, just pretend it doesn't exist.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 2:50 PM
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Monday, December 22, 2003Numonic Device 2,3,4,1
There are songs that you hear, and you're like, "Please! How teeth hurtingly sweet is that?" They're over sentimental. They're gush.
Until you find yourself on the dance floor, in the arms of the most spectacularly handsome man in the world, his hand on your back, his thumb just grazing your skin. He's very warm and for once your feet know which one's left and which one's right because for once you're not thinking of them. And then it makes sense. It means something. And it's everything.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 5:32 PM
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Sunday, December 21, 2003Holiday week...my time off and what am I doing? Updating my homepage, of course!
My site redesign continues with the beginnings of me re-working my written things. I've moved the old version of Balancing Act, remade a new page for my novels with links to excepts of the first two books, including a vew and improved version of Balancing Act and the old version of Blue Moon, and listed my works in progress...books that hopefully will be finsihed over the next few years. These are the ones I'm actively on, I have about eight more begun...
Also have begun the redesign of the Works page itself, which will under go changes as I continue to upload author interviews, articles and books reviews.
I think it's looking spiffy...please feel free to check it out! Balancing Act, for those of you who have already checked out the excerpt, has a creepy new prologue.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 3:17 PM
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Tuesday, December 16, 2003So far this year, I have reviewed 253 books. Out of that amount, here are my favorite picks for this year...there were a lot of books that I loved. This list comprises of the absolute best of them, those marked with the star are the ones I felt were truly extraordinary. If a book I reviewed didn't make the list, it doesn't mean I don't really love it...there are just the ones I feel, right now, are the ones I'd take if I was going to mars to start a new colony. They are sort of kind of in order.
*Ten Thousand Lovers, Edeet Ravel
*Diary, Chuck Palnuick
*Blankets, Craig Thompson
*The monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett
*The Angel With 100 Wings, Daniel Horch
*Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
*Fudoki, Kij Johnson
*Dragon Blood, Patricia Briggs
*Days of the Dead, Barbara Hambly
*Still Life With Crows, Preston and Childs
*A Garden in Rain, Lynn Kurland
*The outstretched Shadow, Mercedes lackey
Heroes in the Dust, Jennifer Macaire
Daughter of the Game, Tracey Grant
Every Secret Thing, Laura Lippman
Grass for his Pillow, Lian Hearne
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
Paragon Lost, Dave Duncan
Jester, James Patterson
Sleep Toward heaven, Amanda Eyre Ward
Son of the Sword, J. Ardian Lee
The Samari's Daughter, Sujata Massey
The Vanished Man, Jeffrey Deaver
Night Embrace, Sherrilyn Kenyon
Sharpe's Havoc, Bernard Cornwell
Sinister Pig, Tony Hillerman
Jarka Ruus, Terry Brooks
And in entirely different news, just in case you wanted to know, lady bugs don't crunch very much when you bite them. At least not nearly as much as I thought the would, anyway. I found this out when a particulalry inquisitive/suicidal lady bug crawled down my straw...and no, they don't taste like chicken.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 3:43 PM
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Saturday, December 13, 2003Yay! I love this season. Happy Holidays to all of you...whatever you beleive, whatever you celebrate, may this season be full of joy.
To celebrate, I'd like to post a link to a site that lists ways to say Merry Christmas in several languages...
http://www.xmasfun.com/Fun/Languages.asp
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 7:40 PM
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Tuesday, December 09, 2003Oh! By the way, if you are on AOL, I'll be co-hosting ( as I do every week) a chat in The Printed Word chat room. Tonight's guest is Sheilia Goss. For more information, visit my other homepage....
http://hometown.aol.com/hostrlmeda/index.html It also contains a form for those who would like to either be put on the reminder list, or be a guest.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 1:12 PM
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I hate shopping for food...
(Another resolution: figure out why the heck my titles no longer show up.)
Today the local grocery store was filled with strange people. More so than usual for my part of the world, which is saying quite a bit. First, there's the nice looking, very sweet, older couple who were shopping ahead of me. You know the drill...usually there is one person or group who you end up following all over the store like some sort of deranged stalker. They wanted everything I did, which would have been perfectly cool if the older gent didn't insist on poking everything with his cane. The bottom of his cane. The part that thumps along spit and cigarette strewn parking lots. You know...the part you wouldn't want touching your potential food items. It would have been OK, really, if he didn't poke the vegetables as well as the cans and meats.
Then there was the gentleman who, trying to smush everything on the half inch of conveyer belt I'd left him, dropped his boxed sandwich. The box sprung open, throwing the contents all over the floor. He didn't even blink an eye, just slopped everything back in, gave the box a good shake for measure, then carried it back to the case to get another sandwich. I looked and realized that the cashier was studiously *not* looking, so closed my mouth, prayed that the sandwich looks messed up enough that it won't troll in some other luckless victim, and resolved never, ever to buy a boxed sandwich ever again.
Anyway, now I'm trying to warm myself up, and convince myself that blogging, while wonderful and fun is not helping me get things done.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 1:10 PM
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Sunday, December 07, 2003And, the most important addendum to the last post...
If the Lord wills....
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 7:00 PM
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I resolve to resolve!
Saturday, December 06, 2003Well, it's been longer than I meant between posts, but now I'm trying to get everything done before Christmas week...and, well, the end of the year. My end total was 30,245...not bad, but it showed me that I really don't dedicate the time that I should to my writing. I should have made the 50,000 easy.
I've made a lot of realizations. One, that if I wrote more and published my books through small press, I'd make as much in royaties...and maybe even more...as I do editing. And I'd be doing what I'm *suppossed* to be doing, following my true passion...and maybe I'd actually get a few steps closer to the ultimate goal of being steadily published by a larger house. So this year, I promise to publish at least one of the two books, no matter what. I will never, ever take another e book for review, because I never get to them. I will probably also decrease my voilunteer things...articles, even book reviews...because I need to make myself work on my books. I have so many ideas floating around in my head, so many worlds I itch to visit, but when you have interviews and reviews and things to edit laying around, with people expecting you to deliver these things, even though everything but the editing is volunteer, you do those things first because it's easier to say no to yourself.
So, this time, next year, I will have one book published, one short story published (at least) and one more book completely finished. This is my new life, not new year's, resolution. Because I'll never make it if I pi** around trying to scratch out a living doing things that barely pay...I mean, I'm certainly not going to quit my jobs, (which I'm grateful to have) but you know, I have to get my rear end in gear and start working toward my goals. OK, We can be nice to Cindy and say things like, "Well, you tried the big publishers, that was good, you might have gotten lucky." That's what I was doing....but maybe I need to start and prove my worth with a smaller place before I can really begin.
DAW: Rejection slip on query recieved last week. (Blue Moon)
Baen: Still haven't heard, and they've had Blue Moon for well over a year...won't return my emails. I have a sick theory the Baen email slush pile may not be the place to send your stuff.
Luna: Though they passed on Blue Moon, they still have Balancing Act. They had BM for five months, for BA we're going on 6, so they've got to pass on it soon, I'd think. (I know they're rejecting Balancing Act...one, if you don't like one, I don't see how you *could* like the other, and two, She already said in the acceptance letter that it didn't sound quite right for them. Though since it is the Holidays, we'll probably not hear from them till next year. That's ok. I don't intend to send anything out until the end of January...give people to ctahc up from the Holidays, etc.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 5:42 PM
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