Writer's Kryptonite

I've talked about how writers feel the need to write. Well, so far today that writing feeling has been shot. And its all due to my kryptonite as a writer: pain. Headaches I can ignore. I'll pop some pills and walk away for a bit. But pain slows down the mojo big time.

Case in point, last night I burned my wrist taking the dinner out of the oven. The chicken was perfectly cooked, just like my wrist when the cover fell off and the steam blasted me. At that point, I had to write one-handed... (Couldn't lean the wrist against the keyboard.) To add to the streak of bad luck, later that evening my stomach bothered me. There went writing period.

By morning, all my bad luck should either go away or get worse. That's when I banged my kneecap on my van door. The pain sucked. It hurt enough to have me laughing and wanting to hurl at the same time which is never good...

So here I am with my leg throbbing and an uncomfortable wrist wishing my distracted brain could ignore the pain and write. I do have options to avoid typing since I can dictate the words, but what good does that do when my leg feels like I tried to knee a dude with steel balls? Since the Muse is waiting beside me tapping her impatient foot I plan to do what I can, even if I'm weakened today.

Muse Monday

Well, after a long break, the Muse is back at my house. She told me she'd been off with some writer in Colorado skiing on slopes or something. I didn't care. The important thing was that she's back and I have scenes I'm itching to write. I thought I'd convey what this feeling feels like to others when I say the Muse is in my house. In other words, I feel an overwhelming urge to write. Its like a bunch of scenes and characters that were never there suddenly popped out of nowhere and started talking. And they never shut up. The whole thing is a movie waiting for me to type it out.

All I can do during this time is go crazy. For the last three days I've gone to bed past midnight when normally I'm knocked out by now. When my family went out to eat for Chinese food on Saturday, I had my notebook open so I could write down plot points that screamed to come out. It's a flood I can't stop. During dinner my husband looked at me and said, "You look like you're plotting to have some heroine save a dragon or something."
I smiled back and said, "Not exactly, but you could say that." (Wow, that means I have a dreamy look in my eyes or I looked like I'm in a druggie writer haze. Sweet!)

For now, I resumed my famous spot on my couch in my living room where I can type on my laptop. No televisions blaring, only me and the words waiting to come out. I'll get an interruption to the flood here or there. But, all in all, the Muse is back so its time to par-tay.

Excerpt Monday

Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published
books, contracted work or works in progress, and link to each other. You don't
have to be published to participate–just an writer with an excerpt you'd like to
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Here is the five part of my series which I started several months ago. I normally don't write about vampires, but the madness at Harlow's family fun center continues. If you would like to read Part I, Part II , Part III, and Part IV they are available as other Excerpt Monday postings. I took a month off to figure out where this story goes and now I'm ready!

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Fun at First Bite

I've had pizza delivery men show up looking crazy, vacuum salesmen with attachments longer than the span of my cryptic living room, but I have never had a hot guy show up dripping wet outside my door. Call it karma, whatever you want, but after using a chisel to get pizza off the carpet floor at Harlow's Family Fun Center, I think I deserve some man candy.

Edgar's appearance left me distracted. His wet polo shirt clung to his chest. For half a second, I watched the rise and fall of his chest. (Dead people didn't breathe... Who cares? He looked delicious.)

"Edgar?" I stammered. After everything that had happened in the shower, I didn't expect to say anything eloquent.

I licked my lips as drops of water dripped from the tendrils of his hair onto the floor. For once I didn't give a damn if a guy brought in mud.

"You're safe," he whispered. He took a half-step forward and I gasped.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"I had this overwhelming feeling that you needed me." He tilted his head. "That you wanted me to help you."

The kind of help I needed from him involved less clothes, but I didn't have plans to express these feelings with a complete stranger I'd recently met.

The space between us dwindled. I tried not to think about how I was naked under the bathrobe, how my bed was approximately eleven feet away, and finally, if my former roommate's dusty condoms would work on a vampire.

The scent of his cologne tickled my nose. Nothing subtle like the products I smelled on the men from work. With a single whiff, I inhaled a rich spiciness which slithered down my hips and made me willing to part my thighs.

His gaze swept from my tousled hair down to my toes. For once I wished I'd painted my chipped toenails. Then to make things even more interesting my robe parted. I expected Edgar to stare down the half-exposed boob, but he immediately spied the necklace.

"Where did you get that?" His eyebrows lowered.

Did he think I stole it? "From a trash bin. My boss threw it away." I took a step back when his lips parted slightly revealing an elongated tooth. The idea of introducing him to the Happy Laney Playland went away with a swoosh.

"You have something very dangerous around your neck, Laney."

"Dangerous? It's just a necklace." No need to talk about the freaky-naughty shower dream.

He circled around to the couch and leaned against the side. After a brief sigh, he ran his fingers through his hair. "There are magically imbued objects out there in the world. These objects, like your necklace, shouldn't be in the hands of mortals."

"Seems like an easy enough problem to solve. I'll give it back to Chauncey in the morning."

"This isn't a request. I'm telling you to give me the necklace if you value your life."

"I'm not giving it to you." I placed my hands on my hips. "First of all, this is not my stuff to give. I refuse to lose my job over stealing private property. Second, if you have a beef with Chauncey, then you two can duke it out in the morning."

"If you walk into work with that thing on, I can only protect you so much."

Did this guy think he could walk in here and tell me what to do? Other than Chauncey, no one told me what to do anymore. Well, on the other hand, he was a vampire and he could strike out and rip the damn thing from my neck. But he didn't. He stood there waiting patiently. After what occurred with the robber, for some reason I knew he wouldn't hurt me.

"I'll settle this tomorrow evening with Chauncey. He'll get his necklace back and you two can figure out who the owner should be since Chauncey and I can't keep it."

"What makes you think Chauncey is a regular man?" He flashed a grin.

This night had gone from weird to insane. "Ok, we're done. You can leave now."

I expected a rain of protests, instead he stood like a marionette with invisible strings and staggered to the door. The necklace vibrated against my skin, leaving me gasping by the time he left.

The door closed behind him and I fell to the floor in exhaustion. My legs resembled pudding and the once comfortable robe suffocated me. I closed my eyes as pain pounded against my sinuses. He'd already left, but by that point I'd decided I didn't want to keep the necklace anymore. With trembling fingers, I reached behind my neck to remove the jewelry.

The clasp had vanished. The necklace wasn't going anywhere.

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Happy Friday - Onward Ho!

Still waiting. Still writing. But the nice thing about waiting is thinking about the good things one has going for themselves. Right now I am healthy. (Yep, starting out with the basics.) I could be sick on my butt *knocks on wood, I'm not that dumb* with a head cold from hell and busted knee. Instead my eye is still on the prize of writing and continuing to distract myself with nerdy projects.

I'm trying to work on a bunch of writer tools, but well things happen slowly when you are crunching code.

Another good thing is I have ideas. I am drowning with ideas. I could write for years with the treasure trove I have. Right now my steampunk and dark paranormal are coming along. Slowly and not as fast as I'd prefer, but the wave is coming soon where my house will go to hell and my husband will question my sanity as I write like mad.

Things could be much worse. I could have a finished book in my agent's hands and no idea on what to do next. I could dwell on how any ideas I have suck and how they'll never be published. But I refuse to because I am driven to succeed. There may be bumps in the road to OZ, but today I will happily march down the yellow brick road, kick the Cowardly Lion a few times for being a punk, and think about the positive things.

Absolute Beginners

Today, I can't help but think about over a year ago when I started writing again. It was back in November of 2008. Wow, I was so excited about my story. And hungry too to write. But boy did I write a dousy with a bunch of new writer mistakes all over the place. My first manuscript was in such a poor state where Sarah Bromley had to rip me a new one. (Yes, she did it kindly.) Whoa, that flashback was painful. Backstory all over the place, heavy use of "it was" cringe. Either way, I was an absolute beginner and I had to start somewhere.

When I think back to those first days, I remember that excitement in knowing this was the beginning of a journey I didn't want to end. Took me a while to figure it out, but writing is a journey. The whole thing reminds me of that movie Stir of Echos with Kevin Bacon. It's the story of a psychic whose ability is triggered based on a hypnosis session. His sister-in-law opened a door in his mind. One that could never be closed again. Now, I'm not sayin I see creepy folks walking down the halls of my house, (and that includes my kids) but I feel like I can completely relate to that. When you're a writer, you are driven to write. It's that itch you can't completely scratch. That succulent dish on the table that you can never get enough of sampling. Once I started writing again, I knew I wouldn't be able to stop. Hell, I'm missing the four key on my keyboard but that hasn't slowed me down. (Irritated me to no end, but that's another story...)

Sometimes, when I'm not in my frenzy of writing, I ask myself, why not quit for a bit and enjoy something else? I've done that a few times. I took a week or two and worked on a programming project I like. But I keep coming back because I love to write. I have to get the words out. All those years where I didn't write, I wonder how come I never started back up. Writing is like a warm blanket. (Not Snuggie size, though. They're weird. Case in point, the WTF Blanket.)

There's no escape. The door is open and I've gone through it. And I'm perfectly happy with things that way.