Story Friday

To read my new short story Ternion, the first in a series I'm writing, click here.

Off to be a Novelist

I have one more novel to finish before the end of the year, so I'm unplugging for a few days. See you once I wrap that up.

Christmas at the Beach

Although this was our very first Christmas alone as empty nesters, we decided not to spend it moping around the house. Instead we went to the beach.

There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the temperature hovered around 72F with a light breeze blowing. Perfect weather. My guy and I both grew up by the beach; he was an avid surfer, too. I just love the beach. I would rather go to the beach than any other place on the planet, including Paris.

This guy was one of the few birds willing to pose for me. We brought our lunch with us, and had it while sitting on a bench by the boardwalk so we could watch the waves and the people.

We weren't the only non-traditionalists; families were everywhere building sandcastles with their kids. I know most of them were tourists staying at local hotels, but it was nice to see that.

We walked about two miles down the beach (I wish my legs were this long) before we headed back home. Beautiful day; beautiful way to spend my least favorite holiday. I feel a new tradition coming on now.

Wishing You

Merry Christmas from Valerean.

Image Credit: Hitcom from Pixabay

Story Friday

To read my new short story Peace, click here.

Image credit: Pixabay

Blast from Christmas Past

While shuffling through my photo files I came across this shot of Katherine, in braids, marching in our little town's Christmas parade back in 2011. She would perform in the town parade every year (including when she was in middle school) and make faces at me while she marched past. Still cracks me up.

Second Life

I decided during the holidays to take the pressure off myself and have fun with some cutter quilt pieces. These two both appealed to me, but it was the piece on the left that ended up on my work table.

The stitching on the piece is very nice, but the patchwork was threadbare in quite a few places, and shredding in one corner. The first step in preserving the piece was to mend it.

For the shredded corner I layered a sturdy but airy lace over the patch to cover the damage but allow the color of the original patchwork to show through; this is a pretty common repair technique for old crazy quilts.

Finished repairs.

For some of the other threadbare patches I appliqued some metallic lace fabric over the damage. Tulle also works well in this type of repair.

After I sewed the piece to the front of a plain canvas tote and covered the edges with some vintage gray lace I added a spray of ruffled lace and a vintage brooch over a split in one patchwork seam, which held it together and disguised it.

The end result wasn't planned at all, but it makes me pretty happy.

Year 3

As Omicron is now surging we are maintaining our personal lockdown. No celebrations, no guests for dinner, just my guy and me for the holidays. We still wear our masks and social distance; never once stopped doing that. My handmade masks, which had been working fine for almost two years, are starting to pop some seams now, and the elastic is wearing, so I have to make some new ones. If anyone needs more, do let me know.

The pandemic hasn't changed my life all that much. I take certain precautions that I didn't before Covid, like masking and staying away from everyone in public, and we stopped dining in at restaurants (not counting a couple of times over the summer when we felt our vaccinations made it an acceptable risk, and still wore our masks inside anyway.)

My biggest problem is my guy, who buys into a lot of the conspiracy crap he hears on talk radio. The other day I got a little dizzy while we were shopping at the market, and he told me to take my mask off because I was "breathing in too much carbon dioxide." This from a man who probably has no idea what carbon dioxide is. In reality I neglected to eat before we left home and I knew that my dizziness was due to low blood sugar, but this is the kind of idiocy I have to deal with (and no, I didn't take my mask off at all, and after a moment I was just fine.)

I suspect that my guy also doesn't always wear his mask when he goes out by himself. Because he hasn't been sick since he got the flu last year (and yes, we tested him for Covid at the time) he's become over-confident. It makes me angry because he'll bring it home and infect me, but I can't glue one to his face. He thinks he's fine. I think he's 72 and I'm diabetic, and even being vaccinated it's still very dangerous for us to indulge in risky behavior.

On the other hand, I did not get the flu shot last year, nursed him through the flu, and still never caught it myself. I don't catch many colds and I've only had the flu once. Aside from the arthritis and diabetes issues, I haven't actually been sick since Katherine was in high school and infected me with the Norwalk virus, which was about ten years ago. It might have something to do with constantly washing my hands, regular exercise and sticking to a very healthy diet, or it might just be luck.

I can't exactly say I'm looking forward to living through a third year of the pandemic, but I think the key word here is living. I'm still alive, and a lot of people aren't. I will make more masks, gently encourage my guy to stop being a damn ninny, and be grateful that I'm still here to do all of that.

Pressing

Bernina's holiday video this year is making me actually like Christmas. Stop it.

Project Progress

Since October 8th I've been writing a new short story every week as part of a (hopefully) year-long writing challenge for myself. So far they're all pretty much romances, with a few SF thrown in. I don't think I've missed a week so far.

The most difficult part of the challenge is finding the time to actually write the stories. It was probably not a great idea to start this project during the holidays, when I have the least amount of spare time, with the puppies and my full-time writing job just adding to the time crunch. I do a lot of the writing at night right before I go to bed.

I never seem to run out of story ideas, but a few of them want to be novels, so I have to step on their glittery ambitious notions to control the length. Paths and The Return definitely still want to be longer, and may eventually become so if I ever find the time to work on them again.

I'm enjoying the project, but I'm also a little frustrated by the time constraints. I want to keep working on it, however, so I consider that a good sign.

Lace Patching

When you use vintage cutter quilt pieces for a project it's sometimes best to mend any threadbare spots before you sew them. This makes the piece stronger and also helps prevent more damage. Whenver possible I try to use lace to do this rather than cover it with new fabic.

For this patch I used an airy lace that will allow some of the color of the original patchwork to show through, which is a pretty effect. It's basically sewing the lace down on top of the threadbare area. You can use flat lace cut to fit the entire area, or layer ribbon-width lace like I do here.

Most of this piece is intact, so I only have to do this in a few spots.

Best of 2021: Happiness

I finally got to see all twelve episodes of the apocalyptic SF k-drama Happiness, and it is definitely the best Korean TV series I've watched this year.

The story kicks off in the past, when the two lead actors are high school students. This may be the coolest opening scene I've ever watched to set up a story. Yoon Sae Bom (Han Hyo-Joo) wants to get out of class, but the students are in lockdown because injured baseball player Jung Yi Hyun (Park Hyung-Sik) is sitting on the edge of the roof and everyone thinks he's going to jump. Sae Bom sneaks up to deal with the situation by first talking to Yi Hyun, and then finally pushing him off the roof when even he leasts expects it (he falls safely onto a big inflated cushion below.)

I didn't realize why Sae Bom did this at first, but then it made sense when she's taken away in handcuffs: Yi Hyun can't get into any trouble because she pushed him. At this point Yi Hyun also falls for Sae Bom, and asks her to be his girlfriend, but she turns him down flat.

At this point we go to a post-COVID future where an adult Sae Bom is a member of a special forces anti-terrorist team, and Yi Hyun is a police detective. Working on different cases, they encounter ordinary people who turn into crazed zombies who attack, bite and drink the blood of anyone who comes near them -- and then turn back into normal people for a while, thanks to a highly infectious virus dubbed Madman Rabies. Sae Bom is scratched by her zombie, but doesn't seem to become infected. The situation seems to calm down as Han Tae Seok (Jo Woo-Jin), a lt. colonel with the health service command, arrives and takes charge of both cases, but at this point you get the feeling that things are a lot worse than anyone realizes.

More than anything Sae Bom wants her own apartment -- in this near-future time the cops live in dorms -- and is able to get a very nice one thanks to her bravery dealing with the zombie (and by talking Yi Hyun into marrying her so they can qualify as newlyweds.) By this time you realize Yi Hyun is crazy in love with Sae Bom, but she seems oblivious to him. They happily move into their new place, which is part of a huge complex of apartment buildings, only to discover they have some noisy and obnoxious neighbors. When one of the tenants becomes infected by virus, things start to get scary. That jumps up a few notches when Tae Seok and the military quarantine all of the apartments as the virus begins to spread through the buildings.

What Sae Bom and Yi Hyun go through trying to survive quarantine and the mountain of problems the tenants create would be frightening enough, but there are two different murderers they also have to contend with, tenants who are willing to sacrifice each other to protect themselves, a little girl who has a heart condition, dwindling food and water, the virus mutating, etc. Everyone in all the other buildings become infected, too, creating a zombie army ready to attack anyone who comes outside. To add to the terror it turns out that an antibody in Sae Bom's blood may be the only cure for the virus -- and then Yi Hyun becomes infected.

Happiness is not a fun series to watch, it's a nail-biter. All I did was hold my breath, I swear. I actually watched the final episode without English subtitles just so I could see what happened (and then went back and watched it again once they subtitled it.) Park Hyung-Sik was stunning in his role; he showed the kind of maturity and complexity I'd only glimpsed in his past performances (all of which dazzled me, too.) Han Hyo-Joo gets my gold star as the best actor in the series; she played a very enigmatic yet adorable character who stole every scene she was in. Even the ones with Hyung-Sik were hers. He did the next best thing by letting her steal them, too. They were amazing together, and their subtle, low-key romance while all of this horror and terror is going on was the very best love story I've seen in a long time.

This series is quite violent, sometimes very graphic, and yet everything as depicted was appropriate to the story. It's not something you want to watch if you have an aversion to seeing blood, as lots of that is splashed around, or zombies, who were quite convincing. With that warning in advance I have to give this show my highest recommendation. It really is the best series I've watched all year. Available to watch on Viki.com.

Story Friday

To read my new short story Ringer, click here.

Image credit: Eltonfsilva from Pixabay

Covered

Finished embroidering and binding my cutter quilt scrap desk journal cover.

It's a little skewed due to my complete inability to cut anything straight, but I don't care. It's just for me.

Must make a few more. I love cobbling together and stitching on these old quilt pieces.

Salading in December

My blood sugar is on the rise again, and I've gained a couple pounds I didn't need, so I'm cutting myself down to two meals a day, with one being a salad like this one at lunch or dinner. Dieting is never fun, but during the holidays while everyone is stuffing themselves with treats? Really hard.

To add more exercise to my regime I'm taking the dogs for two walks a day now as well. My knee hasn't let me use the bike yet, but I'm hoping with some weight loss and the walking I can get it back into daily bike shape.

A Day of Sewing

I picked up some Art Gallery Fabric scraps and bolt ends on sale as a reward for finishing my latest work novel. It's cheaper than buying yardage, and I'm able to recycle new fabric that might have otherwise been discarded.

I also bought this koi furoshiki, which hasn't arrived yet, and thought, why not combine them?

I always give myself a day off after finishing a book, so I spent it cutting the AGF scraps and ends into 2-1/2" strips.

I then sewed seven strips together to make five of these strip pieces.

After that I cut the five strip pieces into 14" blocks.

I don't have quite enough to make a full quilt top, but it's a good start.

My Architect

Author Anne Rice passed away on Saturday at the age of 80. Among the many other things she did during her lifetime she inspired me as a writer in countless ways. We shared a love of history, writing very long stories, and completely ignoring the herd, I think. She challenged me on so many levels I've probably been more influenced by her than any other author I've read, too.

I dedicated to her the first novel in my Darkyn series, which made me a name. I also credit her for giving me the courage to write my steampunk books, the first of which started out as a NaNoWriMo project (and which despite critical acclaim never really sold as well as the publisher expected and ended my NY career, but ce la vie.) I never had the chance to meet her in person, but I did walk past her house once. Okay, I stood outside her house and stared at it for a long time on a walking tour of New Orleans twenty years ago. I also wrote to her once to tell her how much her work meant to me. Even if she never read that letter, I'm glad I did that.

I loved a lot of Anne Rice's books. I also had problems with a lot of them, too. She wrote exactly as she pleased, which is a privilege few of us authors have. I still consider The Witching Hour to be one of the most engrossing (and disturbing) novels I've ever read. I don't think I can ever again read Memnoch the Devil because it upset me too much the first time around. She was wordy, irreverant and sometimes so hostile to her characters and readers I was a little afraid of her. But she was also a genius, and I respected the hell out of her. We will never see another writer like her again.

Safe journey, my architect of dreams.

Covering Up

As a mini side project I started working on making a cover for my next desk journal out of these cutter quilt pieces.

Book covers are a good way to use vintage textiles that are too old and fragile to withstand frequent laundering.

I also washed the top patchwork of the hidden quilt to see if any of it was still usable.

It was already shredded a bit, and very dirty, but the piece emerged from its bath looking and smelling a lot cleaner.

Happy Birthday

My new favorite picture of my guy and our girl. Happy 72nd birthday, baby.

Story Friday

To read my new short story The Return, click here.

Image credit: Imaartist from Pixabay

Done and One More

Using my new split-session process I finished another novel for work this week. I have one more to write that I would like to get done before Christmas, and since I have already written a couple of chapters of that one I may even do it. But if I can't I'll finish it before the end of the year for sure, which will make three books I've written, or 180K, in slightly under three months.

I feel like Super Writer. :)

72 and Counting

My guy turns 72 on Saturday, and I'll be making him his new favorite dinner (sausage pasta skillet) and a German chocolate cake. I also invested in some birthday gifts this year, and this gardening kit was one Maria recommended.

This is a really nice gardening set, too. Everything looks sturdy and the tote will be nice for him to use to carry things out to our gardens.

Shutterfly sent another free wall calendar offer, so I made him one with pics from his trip to Montana. For this I just had to pay shipping.

Total cost: around $25.00 for both gifts.

Two Changes

After wrestling with writing this year for six months (and mostly losing) I made two big changes to my process. At first I wasn't sure it would do anything to help me, but I kept at it. For the last eight weeks I've written at least 2.4K every day without fail, so I thought I'd look at what I changed, and why I think it worked.

The biggest change came out of necessity in dealing with the puppies: not working for eight to ten hours straight. My guy and I started taking shifts with the dogs, who needed to be watched at all times and house-trained when they were little. To accomodate this I split my writing sessions into first thing the morning for 3-4 hours, and then after dinner for 4-5 hours.

The effect on my work was immediate: I wrote more, and I wrote faster. I started setting goals for myself to see if I could reach them, and I did every day. I wrote 60K in October, and that novel is the best one I've written in a few years. I repeated that in November.

One physical side effect from splitting my sessions was that my neck stopped hurting as much, and I stopped wearing the cervical support collar I'd basically worn all the time for six months prior to the work change.

The other big change I made was to work on slow stitching and other meditative projects every day between my writing sessions. Usually I do my needlework at night after I finish my work day, but with the split sessioning I couldn't, so I switched to mid-day. Quilting and sewing help me focus and feel good about myself, and calm me down a lot, but I never thought to do this between writing sessions.

Anyway, the end result of making just those two changes is writing over 120K in eight weeks. It took me six months to write 60K before I made them, so this definitely got me back on track.

Kat Art

Since I have nothing to post for today, enjoy some of my kid's artwork. She drew a lot of these chibis when she was a teen; this one was my favorite.

A red chibi.

One she drew on commission for me, based on another author's character.

Everything she creates has a little touch of humor to it, like this sculpted paperweight.

She won an award for this self-portrait, which was also published in an art book.

The littlest dragon. Ah, I miss her.