A quick note: I’m in the middle of moving, starting a new day job, and the general chaos that I love and love to hate. I know I’ve neglected my internet responsibilities, and for that I apologize. Unfortunately, I’m still a bit busier than I’d like to be, so for now a scene that I always meant to turn into something more will have to do.

“My father’s house has many rooms,” Lucifer muttered under his breath. Many rooms and he was always in the wrong one. The atrium, he remembered, it was Wednesday so they meet in the atrium. Hurrying there he found his Heavenly Host pulling a dead leaf off one of His house plants.

“Late again…”

A dig, just a little one, enough to show who was really in charge around here. This is why I hate visiting, Lucifer thought. “I thought we were in the apiary.”

“That’s Mondays,” God corrected. “I’ve been thinking about Job lately.”

“Really?”

“It was fun, wasn’t it? Seeing his faith win out over everything.”

“Destroying his crops, killing his family, ruining all he enjoyed, yeah, fun.”

The Lord gave His most difficult angel a dirty look. “We haven’t done anything like that in eons.”

“You stopped interfering that way a while ago.” Lucifer reached out to the plant the Almighty had been fiddling with. It immediately died.

“I decided intervening caused more trouble then it was worth.” God reached over, caressed the leaf of the plant and made it spring back to life. “But lately… I’ve been thinking it might be a good idea.”

“If you think so it must be.”

God frowned at his hollow praise. Lucifer could be a tricky one, not like the other yes-man angels He kept around the joint. Still it seemed like a fine idea. “I’ll let you start this time. Pick anyone you want.”

“Anyone?” Lucifer raised an eyebrow, the plant and the snide remarks immediately forgotten. He didn’t usually get carte blanche. Heads of states, elder church men, so many options danced in his mind.

“Anyone,” the Lord waved His hand in absentminded dismissal. “But Lucifer? I’m playing too.”

“Of course, of course.” The dark angel rushed out of the room. There was a lot to do before they met again on Friday. Friday in the Zen Garden, he reminded himself.

It had to be someone’s fault. Everything was something’s fault. Except this. She looked around the room and felt the silence looming over her. The heavy weight of it wrapped around her heart and squeezed. It’s no one’s fault, the doctor had said.

She couldn’t believe it, couldn’t stay there not believing it. Tired of being punished so harshly for such small sins she ran. Picked up someone else’s life by mistake, a letter left on a bus stop bench. The young woman didn’t mind.

“You take it. I can’t do it, too isolated up there.”

Then on the ferry, a book someone didn’t finish reading. Read it until they docked, the story echoing her pain.

“What’s your name?” A big man, gruff and angry. He scared her into lying.

“Margaret At-” she thought about the story, looked at the cover, and then out at the waves. “Atwater.”

“Huh,” he wondered but needed her too much to question. She left the book behind. Before the car’s engine cooled she had a baby in her arms again. Her breasts ached at the infant’s cries.

“Her mother took off,” he explained. “That’s why you’re here. I’m on the boat about six months out of the year. It’s the good six months too. In the winter you’ll see too much of me, in the summer not enough.” A pause, shaking his head ‘no-no-no’. “Least that’s what her mother said, before she took off.”

He left on the boat two days later. Another day and she’d forgotten what he looked like. The baby adored her, starved for attention. Her milk came back before the end of the week. Every night she prayed for a miracle. Make the baby mine, she intoned, hands folded, eyes squeezed shut. Let her take the place of what was taken from me.

It would have been easy to leave but she couldn’t. Couldn’t steal that way. Besides, he’d be gone for half a year. Her wish was already half fulfilled. She mumbled it all the time – in the car, walking to the park, rocking the baby, making meals. Let something happen, anything. When they went to music class she introduced herself as another mother, wanted it to be true.

Days into weeks and weeks into months. The baby weaned, a necessary evil since the boat would come back soon.

Except it didn’t. Alaska was a hard place.

She sat in the house, feeling the silence again. This time it wasn’t quite so heavy. This time a baby cried.

It’s no one’s fault, she thought, but she smiled just the same.

It started with the trick-or-treaters eight months after Eric died. He loved Halloween, loved Christmas even more. She could feel it coming, the days when the house would be empty and dead, like he was, when it should be filled with joy for life, like he had been. She put the house on the market without thinking, hired packers, and got storage space before the thoughts had time to gel. All she knew was that she was driving, driving away from the emptiness, headed north, then west.

When the snow came she didn’t blink. Flipped on the wipers, kept going. The highway got bad, so she took a side road. The snow got worse, spent the night in the car. Anything was better than going back to the empty house. When she woke up the roads felt strange. No cell service, barely any radio. No street signs, no signs at all until the Gingerbread Haus bakery.

It reminded her of Germany, even though the building was a Tudor. Inside the smell of dough and warm yeast made her stomach grumble. How long had she been driving? A man’s voice called from the back while she examined sugar cookies painted like miniature impressionistic pieces. She held a starry night when she saw Eric again.

Before she started breathing again, she knew it wasn’t him, just the same hair, like the sunset on fire.

“I’m Phillip, the baker.”

“Painter is more like it.”

“Sometimes I’m even a prince,” he said with a laugh and a gleam in his eye. His cookies tasted like comfort and home, before long he’d directed her to a place to stay.

The old house was drafty and the town so picturesque it almost hurt. The townspeople felt like a collection of characters from a book: crotchety old men, hunched over old women like witches, and little girls in red coats, a boy named Hans who never took off his silver skates. She walked between them, an outsider, welcomed but not embraced. At night she dreamed of Eric, and during the day she visited Phillip. Eventually the dreams shifted, started with Eric and ended with Phillip.

It didn’t take long for her to make dreams into reality. She expected to confuse the two of them, but once they were in bed, Phillip was most decidedly Phillip. He held her hand during the day, showed her the woods, the town. He knew everyone, and they treated him with an almost reverent respect. With him she felt accepted, at ease. Until one morning on her way to the bakery, she ran into a man with Phillip’s features but coal black hair.

“Don’t you have things to do?” He asked with a cruel smile.

His words brought it all back: call the real estate agent, call her job, go back to the house. Was it Christmas yet? So much to do. Her feet moved to the bakery, get breakfast before she left. How many days had it been?

Phillip called to her, wishing a good morning. Her mouth moved automatically, her head on the responsibilities she’d forgotten.

“Everything all right?”

“I met someone, he reminded me-”

“My brother.” The words were condemnation.

“Maybe, he looked like you but with black hair.”

“We’re twins.” He untied his apron with angry fingers. “There’s a story I need to tell you. Let’s take a walk.”

“I’m not dressed for hiking. Besides, I can’t, I don’t have time.” This was not a day for another jaunt through the woods that circled town.

“You need to know.” He covered her hands with hers, so wonderful but so not like Eric.  But there were things to be done. She went anyway.

They walked higher up the mountain than before, the woods growing thicker until the winter sun barely made it through the branches.

“Once upon a time there was a king who had twin sons. He thought his people were getting stale, detached from the world, so he decided that the son who could bring an outsider to stay with him would be king.”

Phillip pulled back a branch, and suddenly woods gave way to a clearing, inside it a castle.

She looked for a long time, then finally closed her mouth to say, “We don’t have kings in America.”

“We’re not in America.”

“Okay, so Canada.” She looked at the castle, a perfect match to the one in every child’s imagination. How turned around had she gotten in the snow storm?

“Not Canada either.”

She turned to him to stare.

“My brother likes the old ways. He wants us to stay apart. I like you.” He blushed a little. “So you can go, or you can come meet my father. I’d like you to stay.”

He held out his hand to her and, for a second, she thought about all things she had to do. Then she smiled and asked, “Would I be princess?”

This tweet flew across my feed earlier today:

Poor Linda is struggling with crafts, while I’m worrying over contract issues. Judging by the blogs, internet articles, and comments on social media, these aren’t the only concerns on writers’ minds. What happened to the days when all we had to do was write, and write well? When did becoming a writer turn into becoming a marketing expert, attorney, public relations specialists, graphic artist, and a manufacturer of promotional materials?

Ernest Hemingway is one of my literary heroes. I toured his home at least three dozen times as child. I (briefly) owned a descendant of his cat, a wonderfully fat polydactyl tom. I admired his pool, and the last penny he embedded in the tile as a jab at his wife. I shivered at the sight of his wine locks, amazed that a man so famous could have to be so careful.

In all those tours I never saw the spot where he made bookmarks. I remember his office with tall windows letting in sunlight, animal heads glaring down, and an antique typewriter, but not a single filling cabinet of promotional materials. None of the bookmarks Linda is struggling with or the pens, pencils, notepads and other ‘giveaways’ I hear about at writing conferences.

Two years back I heard a well published author speak about her giveaways: post it notepads. She went on about giving them to people in the line at the grocery store, to her friends, leaving them in libraries. A good author, she proclaimed, is always marketing. What about writing? Shouldn’t it come first, last, and in the middle too?

When it comes to balancing the business part of writing with the creative part I don’t have a good answer. I’m not sure if we should be promoting with 10% of our author time, or 50%. Every minute I spend not writing seems like ten minutes I’ve actually lost. For me, for now, I’d much rather worry about plot points and characters than bookmarks and sub-clauses.

(Thanks to Linda for being such a good sport about her troubles with craft paper and scissors. You can learn more about her writing, and how much better it is than her crafting, on her webpage: http://www.lindapoitevin.com/)

It’s been 15 months since I last moved. My feet itch. The clever north wind whispers to me of towns yet to be seen, friends yet to be made,  battles yet to be fought…

I’m looking for the next place, the new home. Because I’ve begun to catch myself feeling  like this:

No story left to tell ~ Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, SC

There’s something attractive about the anonymity of hotel rooms. The way you shut the door and no one can find you. The new place, safe from everyone who knows you. The place where you can say you’ve always hated something and no one will remember when you loved it.  A place to reinvent yourself. A place where, when trouble comes to you, you sit under the branches of a tree and feel connected to everyone else who has done the same.

300 year old oak tree, Magnolia Graveyard

Because sometimes you find it’s time to close one door and knock on another one.

Lion Head Door ~ Meeting St. Charleston

Every good gardener knows the work you do in February pays off in May. But while I fondly remember wrapping up a manuscript last February, right now I’m fiddling with an electronic device instead of writing. I’m fluent in a slew of programming languages, I’m never intimidated by a new piece of software, and there are more computers than people in my house every day of the week, but my new eReader has me ready to chuck it all and declare myself a Luddite.

It arrived wrapped in shiny silver holographic paper, a thin electronic rectangle, light enough to hold with one hand. Except that two weeks later I would find it wasn’t really that light. In fact, after about twenty minutes of reading my hand fatigued. If I shifted to rest the device’s weight the orientation of the screen shifted from portrait to landscape. I lied to myself that I’d get used to that.

Reading the same novel I discovered something else, the clue to the mystery, the part Aunt Matilda’s eye color was it blue or brown? I didn’t have a good way to go back and check. My usual method of folding down the corner of the page didn’t translate at all the to electric screen. I could turn the electronic pages backwards, but without page numbers there was no way to find the clue.

And the worst part, without paper pages I had no way of knowing how far I’d read and how much I had left to go. I downloaded a trilogy, packaged as one book. When I checked how far in I was the screen told me I’d read 23% of the content. So if each book would be roughly 33%, I was somewhere around a little bit more than half of the first book, right? Call it two-thirds of the way through, did that mean I should stay up and finish or there was no way I would get to the end before I fell asleep?

I pushed my way through 4 novels, telling myself I was sure to learn to love the eReader eventually. I didn’t. The device sat idle, unloved, for a good two months. But then I stumbled on to a short story, sold only as an e-book, so I’m back at it. I look at my prized books, the hardback Dracula with gorgeous illustrations I unwrapped on my 13^th birthday, the Yale Shakespeare I received at my college graduation, even the lowly pulp fiction noir novels from the 40s,  and I know there’s no combination of settings that will ever replace them.

I’m working on a conference proposal this week about a subject that makes me rant: the portrayal of motherhood as weakness in modern speculative fiction. I’m posting this blog in the (perhaps insane) hope that a few brilliant authors will agreed with me, and want to be on the panel to discuss it with a group of fans.

In mythology and religion, motherhood has been treated as a position of strength as well as gentleness. While depictions of meek mothers certainly abound, strong mothers are also present. The Hindu goddess Durga is a wonderful example. Durga is a fearless mother, who protects with weapons clutched in her eighteen hands. Fierce and feminine, this divine mother rides a tiger into battle.

Historic maternal figures like Queen Isabella of Spain or Queen Victoria, who continued to show their strength after having children, should provide ample inspiration for speculative writers.  Even criminal mothers like, Ma Barker who famously took care of gang members, even eventually shielding them from prosecution, could become a fine character. But where are they? Too often having a baby signals the end of a character’s ability to grow and develop in any direction except a maternal one.

Only two decades ago science fiction had a wonderful example of a mother-warrior, Ellen Ripley. She’s tough. She can fire a gun and run a loader, but at the same time she comforts Newt, connecting with her as she washes the child’s face. She’s exactly the role model I crave: competent, strong, and caring.

She’s also probably lonely, as I can’t think of another strong mother like her. Doctor Who’s Amy Pond can fight off any number of space monsters, but she completely ignores her daughter for several months after the infant is kidnapped. Padme Amidala fires her blaster and works in the intergalactic senate… until she has kids, then she’s too weak to survive heartbreak. Sarah Connor can take down a terminator but we never see her making her son laugh or taking care of him.

Hopefully I’m wrong and the comments will be filled with a thousand examples of characters that don’t suddenly lose the ability to think, fight, or be fierce simply because they’ve managed to reproduce. If I’m not though, and you’d like to talk about why there aren’t any tough mothers in genre fiction today, drop me a note. With luck I’ll find a few brilliant authors, and along with a handful of creative fans, will generate some solutions to the problem.

Forgive my self-aggrandizing but I’ve recently received word that my proposal for the Romance Writers of America Conference was accepted. I’ll be teaching a one hour session entitled “Develop a Free Author Website in 60 Minutes (or Less!).” Along with Jami Gold, a social media maven, I’ll cover creating a free website, setting up a blog, and various hosting options.

I started writing in HTML back in 1997. I worked for a defense firm, taking care of passel of wonderfully geeky mechanical and software engineers. They wanted a website. I had the most free time. The solution was obvious to them: I would learn HTML. I surprised myself by doing just that. Back then the language was rather intuitive, paragraphs were indicated with a p, if you wanted to make something bold, you labeled it ‘bold’, italics were indicated with an I, underline with a u and so on.
The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium, the Powers That Be when it comes to the web) ushered in a new changes and rules. HTML expanded to include XML and XHTML. It spun off the sections about format (fonts, color, text size) to a separate language called CSS. Databases driven websites came along, and ASP made them work. But the basic 10 pieces of my HTML vocabulary from that first website still work and I remain convinced that HTML is the simplest language in the world to learn. I’m a bit of an HTML zealot. I firmly believe that just about anyone can create & maintain a website. I’ve taught 63 year old Grandmothers and 40 year old technophobes.

I still design web pages in my day job, in fact, it’s the best part of my day. Web design is dependable like math, two plus two always equals four. I like the clean lines of code and how I can know that it will work. I love the intellectual puzzle of making the code do what I want. I can’t wait to introduce a roomful of writers to that fun. Until then, if anyone needs help with a tricky webpage drop me a note. I’m happy to play with it.

The town council made it clear, empty houses caused economic blight. Lauren thought it went the other way around, but you couldn’t bulldoze economic blight, so the houses got the short end of the stick. She looked up at the lumbering Victorian. Gingerbread work proudly ringed three stories, a stain glass window crowned the top. It could be gorgeous if someone cared, bought for a pittance, made beautiful. Instead it would be bull dozed, returned to green space, all in line with the new edicts.

The front door stuck until she put her shoulder into it. She expected a dark interior, something with dust swirling in motes of sunlight. The space wasn’t bad though, almost lived in, or alive really, with bright wood work and three fire places downstairs. She found herself thinking about it, considering what she would do with the space. No matter, the bull dozers would come as soon as she scheduled them.

The yip came when she inspected the third bedroom. The kind of yip she’d cursed once, a noise so clearly associated with sleepless nights. Puppyhood. Why did anyone think it was so great? But then her eyes stung, because Baxter, Baxter had always been great even when he was a garbage eating trash dog. Baxter, she blinked away the tears. The yip sounded exactly like Baxter.

It came again, and again, until she couldn’t just call herself insane and go on with the final inspection. She found herself downstairs, then upstairs again. Baxter yipping coming from everywhere and made by nothing. She remembered him, every detail of his golden fur and dark brown eyes. The yips brought his puppyhood though, not his older years, the arthric hips, the slow still-eager wag of his tail.

They were in the front parlor room, the square of space empty except a broken down red couch and them. She saw the first one and knelt down. “Bax?”

The puppy looked up at her, almost sleepy, but then sprang up, ran to her, golden retriever ears flopping around the couch. She fell almost, plopped down on her butt and scooped him up, this Baxter-puppy-that-couldn’t-be. He licked her face like Baxter, wiggled and climbed over her. Baxter as a puppy. Her heart filled with joy and pain, gladness at this stolen moment. She’d missed him and what he stood for, more than she realized.

And then another yip, and there were more of them. Seven in the end. A litter. She couldn’t leave them to the bulldozers. She could barely leave the room. So much love, so many memories. A room of seven Baxters. She found an empty box, filled it with them. After longer than she cared to admit they all went in the car, then back to her office.

Where they disappeared. Some one took them from the box and she fumed about it. Angry. Cursed the world. She could go buy a puppy, sure. Buy seven of them. But they wouldn’t yip like Baxter. She took her bitterness out on the house. Had her assistant do the final inspection that afternoon.

He came back almost manic with glee, talking about papers, forms. The builder he said, over and over again, as if she would understand. They filled him with coffee, made him slow down. He’d found plans. Dozens of them, upstairs in a drawer. The architect was famous, the house couldn’t be bulldozed. He’d dreamed of finding a hidden gem like this.

But the forms, the papers, where were they? Stolen from his car. But he’d find them again. The bull dozers couldn’t come.

Dispatched an intern, a quick young thing. She came back faster, her eyes red from tears. Just like her grandmother’s house. No, no papers, no forms, no sign of that. But the rooms all smelled like her grandmother, like mint couch drops and hair oil. A bowl of M&Ms on the mantel of the fireplace, red and green ones so it would always be Christmas, she said with chocolate in her teeth. The intern got the price out of the computer, the details on the back taxes. Less than most down payments, but more than the girl could afford. Then the tears came, they couldn’t bulldoze her grandmother’s house.

Clever house, Lindsey thought, catching on to its scheme. She drove in the setting sun, stood out front. You always thought of it the other way ‘round, of people haunting houses, not houses haunting people. She walked up the front porch, put her hand on the wood, feeling the warmth. From the sun maybe, caught all day, or maybe from something else, the beating heart of place. Baxter had been more than a dog, in the end, he had a soul somehow, he was Real. Could a house do the same?

Inside a comforting yip greeted her back. “You’re smart,” she told her house, and opened the door to find the golden retriever pup, a bright blue welcome home ribbon tied on his neck.

Each Christmas a dear friend gives me an Amaryllis in bloom. The flower dies in six weeks or so, but the long green leaves decorate my windowsill until the fall. Then, in an act of great faith, I cut off all the leaves, shake the bulb out of its nest of dirt, and throw it into the fridge. It waits there for me, for at least a month, until I put it back where I found it. Then I wait for another eight weeks, hoping that the magic will still work. If I’m lucky, I get the photo above. If I’m very lucky, I get better: more flowers, more bulbs.

It’s a lot of waiting and lot of hoping. It’s taking drastic steps, damaging something that I know is working because I believe I can get better. I value the final flower enough to risk killing the plant. I don’t even pretend to know how bulbs form in the wild, how they work when there is no refrigerator. I take it on faith that the people who guide me know what they’re doing.

I’m editing now – somewhere between my second and fifth formal round of edits, depending on how you count. My time was not my own this fall, and so my Amaryllis bloomed late, in January instead of December. They sit on the window by my desk, and reassure me that my edits, which require just as much faith, will turn out. I hope they’re right.