Debbie Daughetee

It's been so long since I posted here. I had to read my last post and I had serious deja vu.

My second Dark Shadows script, "Final Judgement", recorded on Saturday. And guess what, Paul and I are going to Las Vegas. I don't know what the connection between DS and LV is -- I'm going to have to explore that one.

"Final Judgement" pits Josette and Angelique against each other in a ghostly trial. I wanted to play with this confrontation between the light and the dark. I wanted to see Josette and Angelique go after each other, something we never really saw in the original series. I won't tell you who wins. Hopefully the CD will be out by Christmas.

Okay, the Dark Shadows script was turned in on Tuesday and now I can do my promised blog on my trip to Las Vegas.

Paul and I left on Saturday morning. We decided to stop at Acoma Pueblo on the way, spend the night in Flagstaff, then drive the rest of the way on Sunday.

We love the drive down 40 through New Mexico and Arizona. It's so beautiful with wide open vistas and the peculiar colors of the desert. It was actually very green. My father, who lives in Florida, would laugh at that. Green for us is a sage color grass that covers the desert floor.

The drive back to Acoma was amazing. There were huge red rock outcroppings that looked like they'd just been dropped in the middle of the desert. In the distance you can see all the flat-topped mesas. This is Indian land -- you can't take pictures without permission (which means buying a permit). You can feel the energy shift as you drive -- yeah, this is also sacred land. Spectacular.

At Acoma we visited their new museum with it's display of pottery. Acoma happens to be my favorite of the southwest pottery with it's black, white and orange geometric designs. Then we took "condense" tour of the pueblo, which mean we got to go to the top of the mesa and visit the old church. Our guide, Gary (who's real name I can't pronounce) was wonderful and filled us in on the history of the graveyard (you should see the view from the graveyard!) and the church. It's not a pretty history, but I'm not going to get into it here. I will say, however, that the priest built his church over the Kiva, the pueblos sacred ceremonial place. So yes, we were on sacred ground.

We had a wonderful lunch at the cafe there -- steak and shrimp for $10. That came with potato, vegies and desert. It was really yummy. I expected less -- you know, like cafes at tourist spots. Instead we had the chef coming out to check on us and see if we were enjoying our meal. It was great.

By the time we left, all the angst and tension I'd been carrying around from the time Paul was diagnosed with prostrate cancer to the time I went home for my mom's memorial service, had slid away. Sacred energy is like that. It grounds you. It helps you find peace.

So on we went to Vegas.

We stayed at the Flamingo because that's where we got married and we got a great deal for a great room. I really like the Flamingo. Paul went off to play in some poker tournaments and I turned on my computer to a) grade final papers of my Axia writing students and b) work on the Dark Shadows script. Five minutes later my monitor on my laptop went down! AHHHHHHHH. The hotel wanted 75 cents per minute to work on their computers. The great flat screen TV in our room had the menu feature turned off so we couldn't hook my computer up to it (though we tried, oh how we tried). Finally I had to face the fact that I wasn't going to get any work done that week, and I'd have to grade two classes worth of papers and finish my script in 4 days after we got home.

Bette Midler made it all worth it.

I had two role models growing up. Both were very strong women who went after what they wanted even though life seemed against them. Both of these women taught me to dare to dream and to actually go after that dream. One was Barbra Streisand. I got to see her in concert. I couldn't talk about it for 3 days without crying.

The second was Bette Midler. She sang The Rose. I cried. I love the movie, I adore the song. I even wrote the song into a Touched By An Angel script for Della Reese to sing. I love Della and her voice, but The Rose is a difficult song to sing. It's basically the same thing over and over. The singer has to make it interesting. No one does it better than Bette.

Her show was a bit like a vaudville act. She did her Delores the Mermaid and Soph the oldest Showgirl. Hilarious. But my favorite part was when she just came out on the stage alone and sang. God, what a voice. I cried.

Favorite line: When I started out my audience was on drugs. Now my audience is on medication.

Favorite moment: Bette sitting on the end of the stage playing the ukulele and singing to close the show. Of course she came back and did Wind Beneath My Wings. I cried.

Okay, so then we signed up to go to a timeshare presentation so we could get Phantom of the Opera tickets for $40. They had several shows you could chose -- one of the was Donny and Marie. I wanted to go to them but Paul nixed that! Just like he nixed Tom Jones (he wasn't there that weekend anyway). So we chose Phantom. At noon the day of the show Paul entered at tournament. At 7:30 I went to see Phantom by myself because Paul was still playing!

Phantom was amazing! The special effects, the voices, the dancing. I was totally entranced. When I got out of the show, Paul was waiting for me. He won the tournament! Whoo hoo. Worth missing a show for, especially since he'd seen it in London many years ago. We had dinner -- well they had dinner I had dessert -- with a husband and wife from London who were also in the tournament. They were great fun and we exchanged info.

Somewhere inbetween all this I went down to have dinner in the Flamingo by myself and met an older man in line (72) who was also alone. His friend had gone off with a women he'd met on the Internet. So Jack and I had dinner together. He was very interesting. From Nebraska (I don't think I ever met anyone from Nebraska before) he used to raise race horses. He never did the big circuit, but he did reasonably well. He also used to do long distance trucking. He'd just lost his wife in October and this was his first trip away since then. She'd been ill a long time, like my mom. And like my dad, he took care of her at home.

While we were sitting there, Paul called. He and his friend Pete (magician, poker player) had just lost their money and was on their way back. I told them they could join Jack and I in the cafe. "Jack?" Paul told Pete that I pick up strays. Hm. I guess. I just find people interesting.

Some tips. When going into restaurants, ask if they have specials which aren't on the menu. At the HardRock, the restaurant there has the 777 deal - Steak and grilled shrimp for $7.00. Yummy. Not every place has it, but many do. You have to ask.

Blueberry Hill has great breakfasts. It's not on the strip, but it's worth the drive.

On the drive home we saw antelope, deer and elk. It was a perfect end to a perfect trip. Except, of course, for my monitor. I think the universe just decided I needed a vacation.

I've done a lot of different kinds of writing -- teleplays, screenplays, short stories, novels, essays.

Now I'm writing an audio drama for the 60s cult classic Dark Shadows. How totally cool is that?

I used to work for Dan Curtis before I actually got a staff job on Dr. Quinn. I loved working for Dan. Not only did he create Dark Shadows, but he produced and/or directed Trilogy of Terror (remember Karen Black getting chased around by the little Zuni doll?), Night Stalker (the movies, not the series) and versions of Dracula, The Portrait of Dorian Grey and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Not to mention he won an emmy for direction Winds of War -- or was it War and Remembrence.

But I digress. When I was 8-years-old I used to run home from school to watch Dark Shadows.

So I was contacted about a month ago to write for Big Finish, who does the DS audio dramas. I turned in two pitches, they liked both but chose a Willie/Angelique story first. I did a treatment. They sent me scripts to study.

Now I'm working on the scripts. It's a combination of a teleplay and a short story. There are only two actual characters (all recorded by the original actors -- so Lara Parker and Johnny Karlan in my episode). The story is told from the point of view of one characters (Willie) so there's a lot of internal dialog.

It's different from writing a teleplay because there are no visuals. So if I want to describe a place or a person, I have to put the words in the character's mouth. And all the monologue part is written in past tense. There's no setting the scene in a descriptive paragraph. It's more like a short story because you're in your character's head, hearing his thoughts.

It is like a teleplay because you are writing established characters and have to be true to their voice. There are some real fans out there who will bust me big time if I make Willie use proper Queen's english.

When there are characters other than the two designated for this episode, their actions and dialog are once again filtered through the POV character. So if I write actual dialog, Willie will be imitating these characters. This seems to go against the show don't tell rule.

In the audio drama I also have to put in sound effects. Josette's theme is one of my favorites. Also the sound of howling dogs whenever Willie starts to remember Barnabas.

There's lots of atmosphere in these scripts. Once again it is written in the POV of the main character. You might be saying that you do the same thing in a short story. But this is different because this is a first person account that is actually going to be spoken by that character. So you're really doing all of the above in dialog -- remember audio drama. No words on a page. No visuals on a screen.

It's a very interesting learning curve. I'm having a great time writing this script. Every day I go back and have to rewrite what I did the day before -- whether it's because I slipped into the present tense in the monologue like I would in a teleplay, or that I wrote some stuff in dialog which should have been in monologue.

Don't you just love learning a new style of writing!

And let me just say once again -- I'm writing a Dark Shadows script! Yippee!

Does anyone else have this problem?

I'm writing along -- have a great time, really into the story, feeling like a WRITER!

Then I come to an end of a section. It could be the end of a chapter or just a break within the chapter. And my minds says, "Okay, we're done." and shuts down.

What the F****. We are not done. I've got 10,000 words to write by the end of March and a piddling 1,000 isn't going to make it.

So I guess I'll go have lunch, and come back to write after. Maybe that will fool my psyche into thinking that it's a new day of writing.

I really appreciated everyone's thoughts on my pevious post about the story in my mother's file cabinet.

I was leaning toward rewriting it -- after the initial emotions wore off. I flew back to Albuquerque in time for Pat Murphy to fly in. She stayed with me for the weekend.

I told her about finding the story in mom's files, and suddenly realized I'd written the story at Clarion West and Pat was my teacher that week. She remembered the story. Okay, that's not quite right. She remembered the symbols in the story. Two big symbols. Two? Oh my god she was right. I was so focused on one of the symbols -- the labyrinth -- that I'd missed the second -- the house. The story is even named for the house.

So we talked about it and some missing pieces fell right into place. So yes, I am going to rewrite the story. The first version was for my mother. The next

As most of you know, I'm in Florida helping my dad after my mother's death. We've been going through things, making surprising discovers like the hoard of silver coins mom had in the back of her filing cabinet.

In that same file drawer there was a folder with geneology information. And in that file, along with birth and death certificates, notes on ancestors, etc., was a manuscript of one of my stories, The House On Hudson Run.

I wrote this story back at Clarion West in 2004. It is about a woman who looses her mom and dad in an auto accident, and returns to the family home, full of grief and regret, to get it ready to sell. In the garden she finds a hidden labrynith. One stone has the name of her mother, one has the name of her grandmother.

It's about letting go of grief and embracing the joy of life. The entire thing is based on my life with my grandmother and mother. The house on Hudson Run is the house I always look back on as 'home'.

I sent it to my mother, because it dealt with my grandmother's death of Lou Gehrig's disease. Actually it deals with generations of women's pain. My mother read the story and called me. She said it was like I had been inside her head and heart, that I wrote her feelings with such perfect accuracy. She couldn't believe that I could capture her pain so well when I was only 9 years old when my grandmother died.

I never sold that story. I'd been thinking about pulling it out and reworking it again.

Finding the manuscript in my mother's files made me stop and think about why we write the stories we do. There is a lot of emphasis on sending them out to be published -- and I'm a huge proponant of that. That's a good thing. We spend so much time and energy on our work we should get it out there so other people can read them.

But that's not why we write the stories. We write because we have something inside us that really needs to be expressed, even if it never seems the inside of a magazine or book.

And maybe, just maybe, we write stories because there's someone else who needs to read it, to be moved by it, and to help a healing process.

I sent my mom most of my stories. Well, not my horror, but my spiritual (as opposed to religious) work. I wrote about my grandmother and her garden in another story which was published in After Hours many years ago. Mom didn't keep those manuscripts.

So am I going to rework The House On Hudson Run? I don't know. I sort of feel like it's fulfilled it's purpose. And yet it's against my nature to just let a story go without trying to make it better and get it out there. What do you all think?

As many of you know, I'm writing some audio dramas for Dark Shadows. I'm totally jazzed about this. I loved DS, loved working for Dan Curtis and love the fans with whom I've become acquainted.

I was sent some scripts. They were great -- right up my alley. A combination of short story writing and television writing. Very atmospheric and creepy.

But now I have to come up with some pitches. So I order videos and start having a DS marathon, which I'm totally enjoying. The acting was really good -- even allowing for the flubbed lines and the problems with shooting a live tv show in the 60s.

So I wrote up two pitches and sent them off. One of them I questioned sending because it was too close to the original show and the people at Big Finish are looking for -- well, I'm still figuring that out.

I sent the pitch anyway. The first pitch was way better, much more creative.

Which one did they flip for -- right, the second pitch. And with their notes on it, I'm flipping for it as well.

You'd think I'd learn this lesson by now. When Danna (my writing partner at the time) and I were pitching for Murder,She Wrote after it had been on the air for 10 seasons, we came up with a list of ideas. I had one -- a vampire comes to Cabot Cove. I didn't want to pitch it. I thought they'd never go for it. But Danna talked me into it. And yes, they bought it. The next season we pitched a ghost ship sailing into Cabot Cove harbor. They bought that one too.

So many times we writers try to out-think the people, whether they be editors, producers or whatever, who are going to buy our work. And you know what? You can't. If I hadn't sent in that second pitch I'd probably would still work on the second one, but they wouldn't have been as excited about it and who knows if it would have actually made it into production.

So the moral of the story is, send your stuff out. Don't try to second guess what the people out there buying want. Yes, look at guidelines and read the magazines. Don't send a horror story to Analog. But if you find yourself saying, "Oh so and so wouldn't like this," slap yourself up alongside the head and send that puppy out. You just never know.

My mom was a tiny woman -- 5'l" and if she weighed over 100 pounds, it was on an odd day. But as she used to say dynamite comes in small packages.

She used to make all my formals, and there were a lot because of school dances and Rainbow Girls. I loved it when she brushed my hair. I always had long,thick hair and brushing felt so good. When I was Minnie Fay in Hello Dolly, mom spent over an hour wrapping my hair around her finger and putting bobby pins in there so, the morning of the play, I'd have long curls falling down my back.

Mom had RA for over 50 years. But she never complained about the pain and it never stopped her from doing the things she wanted to do.

Today, my mom passed away. It was a blessing as she'd been suffering for over a year. She went in peace. I will miss her terribly.

I was contacted by Big Finish to submit ideas for Dark Shadows Audio Dramas. This is so exciting. I was a fan as a kid, and ended up working for Dan Curtis during my early television years (for those who don't know, he created DS).

So they sent me several scripts, which I very much enjoyed. And I'm working on my pitches.

But I want to talk about the scripts. They very different from television scripts. They're more like short stories writing in the first person point of view. There are always 2 characters, and the story is narrated from one character's POV with dramatized scenes scattered throughout.

The writer also scripts in some sound effects and music for emphasis and atmosphere.

This is such a great fit for me. It pulls from both of my skills and feels a lot like playing rather than working! Now I just have to come up with some pitches they like, and I'll be golden.

Can you tell I'm excited?

You can check out Big Finish at Bigfinish.com. They also do audio dramas for Stargate Atlantis and Dr. Who, as well as some other shows I haven't heard of -- them being a British company and all.

During all my travels over the holidays, I finally got a chance to do some reading. One of the novels I read was The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald.

I'm ashamed that it took me so long to read this book. Sandra's second novel in this series is already out and the third is due later this year. But the truth is I'm not a huge fan of Space Opera.

Still, I'd read portions of I don't know, either the second and third novel, and was intrigued. So I really wanted to read the first installment.

This novel really caught me like most Space Opera doesn't. Why? The characters:

Lt. Jodenny Scott is fresh from the eplosive lost of her last ship, Yangtze. Friends died right in front of her eyes. And now she's on The Aral Sea heading for the same place where her first ship was destroyed.

Sgt. Terry Myell was falsely accused of raping a fellow crew member. Though charges were never brought against, the shadow of this terrible crime has ostricized him from his crew aboard the Aral Sea.

Both of these characters are wounded. Both are trying to cope with their fears and insecurities while being thrust into a world of conspiracy and intrigue.

I'm not a tech person and for the most part don't understand much of what I read in high tech science fiction novels. The Outback Stars, however, doesn't lose the story in the tech. The tech is second to the characters, and that is what made this novel such a good read.

And when the tech did take the forefront, it was in such a way that it scared the bee geezes out of me. Sgt. Myell has to make some forays into an area of the ship where no one else has the guts to go. I held my breath the whole time. It was as terrifying as any horror novel I've read.

Sandra's personal knowledge of the military, along with the mysterious emergence of Austrialian mysticism, and her wonderful use of male/female relationships carried me through to the very end. I really loved this book and am looking forward to reading the second one.

As my husband said when he read The Outback Stars, "It's space opera with character development. Go figure!"

For those of you who missed this when it came out in 2007, put it on your list of must reads.

I'm so happy the holidays are over. Going to Florida for Thanksgiving and my Dad's B-day, then turning around and going to Texas to spend the Christmas with Paul's family, ended up being just too exhausting. My mother is still going downhill, my father needs surgery and 93-year-old grandmother had bleeding behind her eye which detached her retina. She had surgery and is now doing well.

Whew! I really used to love the holidays.

But now Paul and I are back home and I feel like I'm getting my life back. I finished the rewrite of my dragon story and set it off to Fantasy magazine. I'm rereading my novel and making some polishing changes. At least I'm still enjoying the story and the characters. And I'm rewriting another story to submit to my short story writing critique group. So I'm feeling quite accomplished after so much time away from the keyboard.

This has also been a time of surprises. Out of the blue I was contacted by some old friends from my days on Prodigy when I was part of the Dark Shadows board. I worked for Dan Curtis (who created DS) and he asked me to get on and ask a few questions of the fans. It took a while and a phone call from Jim Pierson, who handled all Dan's DS work, to convince the members that I really did work for Dan. But I made some great friends there and even met some at a convention.

I lost track once I got staff jobs writing for TV. I simply didn't have the time to keep up. Now, out of the blue, Craig Anderson found me and convinced me to sign up for Facebook in order to get back in touch with my old friends. And guess what, one of them happens to be brother to Bob Angell's half sister. Small world!

To go a long with my last post, I was talking about my reaction to ending my novel with my Plotbusters critique group. It was an interesting conversation with Pari Noskin Taichert saying she had the same kind of reaction each time she ended a novel.

Then Pati Nagel sent out this link:

http://tinyurl.com/6j6luy

It's a terrific article about the psychology of finishing a novel. Thanks, Pati!

So, what did you do today, Debbie?

Why, I finished the new ending of my novel.

You did! Congratulations..

Why thank you. It's kind of strange, though. I don'te really feel like I actually finsihed it. Now I know I've got some cleaning up to do and everything. But geez. I finished it. Shouldn't I be celebrating or something.

Why aren't you?

Um... I'm really happy. I think it's a kick-ass ending. Much better than the old one.

So why aren't you celebrating?

I think I'll go get that Red Stripe out of my refrigerator and celebrate right now! In honor of Bob Angel, Jeff Spock and all my other CW pub crawlers! Yay!

Back in 1992 I was called to North Carolina to be a writer's assistant on a mini series. I was going to dinner one evening with a friend, when an African American man started yelling at us and waving us over. A white women had fallen and he couldn't touch her.

My friend and I went to help this woman. I found her wandering dog and walked the woman a couple of blocks to her house. She was drunk. We passed a pretty little African American girl and the dog went crazy, trying to attack her. The woman started spewing words that made me understand she trained her do to do this.

This was a wake-up call for me. I didn't realize this kind of bigotry still existed. I felt so much shame -- for the fact that it did exsist and the fact that I was so unaware.

Sixteen years later the country elects an African American president. This fills me with so much hope. I'm well aware that the kind if bigotry I witnessed in 1992 still exsists. I run into it in the classes I teach online. It's a constant reminder.

But America elected an African American President! It's a transformational moment -- as we've heard over and over. My heart is filled with pride and joy. And the shame I felt in 1992 isn't exactly gone, but is healing.

I had a great writing day today. I'm redoing the climax of my book and I was hot, hot, hot. I love it when you have something planned out, and then the characters come on the scene and off they go into places you never dreamed! YAHOO. What a great time. I just love writing on days like this.

But I'm blasting along -- eleven new pages in -- and I suddenly realizing I'm flagging. I'm still writing, but I've now become somewhat impatient to be done with this particular scene, which means I'm cutting corners. Oops! Not good. Don't like it. Bad writing.

So I stopped for the day. In the middle of a sentence. I actually do that a lot because it helps me get back into that hot place I was in early in my writing session. But sometimes it's just hard to stop, you know? You love what your writing. You love what's coming out of you and you just want it to keep coming, and coming and -- eventually you run out of fuel.

Anybody else have this experience? Do you have to force yourself to stop writing because you just know you're no longer in the zone, no longer doing good work?

Okay, so Erin pinged me and said it's been too long since I've posted. And yes, Erin is right. It has.

Let's see. Paul is doing great. He's out of town this week testing the software he's been working on 7 days a week for the last 6 months. The tests are going great, so that is a good thing. AND he's healthy. That's even better.

My mom went way downhill again, but it looks like she's coming back -- again. Paul, Max and I are going to Florida for Thanksgiving. Mom and Dad have 3 little dogs so it's going to be a zoo. But they insisted we bring Max so...

I haven't heard back from Ginjer regarding my novel, but I didn't expect to. Since I'm completely changing the ending, I'm sort of counting on it taking a couple of months.

But the writing is GREAT! The end of the novel is so much better and I've found new enthusiasm for the book. Now a second book (in the series) is knocking at the door and I'm taking some notes for when I have time to work on it.

I found a new doctor (my old doctor left) who actually listened to me and got me back on my meds. I'm taking very low dose anti-anxiety drugs. I went to a new doctor who started out our conversation with, "We can only take care of 3 things today. You'll have to make an appointment for anything else."

She also refused to renew my prescription for the anti-anxiety meds and wouldn't listen to why I need them and that I never used anything like this before in my life. I hated this doctor so much I wanted to put a hex on her. But I didn't. I did get my flu shot. I guess that's something. I got a new referral for the heart stress test I was supposed to take once I got rid of my shingles. And I got a referral to a pulmonary doctor for my lung check-up. She didn't touch me. She didn't look at me. She didn't care about me at all.

So I found a new doctor who, instead of taking me off the medication, talked me into staying on it until all this stuff with my mom is resolved.

So, now I'm caught up. Well, except I want to talk about a book I read recently. Maybe I'll post about that tomorrow!

Happy new moon everyone. Did you know that last month we had a black moon -- which translates to two new moons in one month. Very unsual. Blue moons -- two full moons in one month -- are rather common. But not black moons.

Anyway it's new moon once again and time to set those goals.

I did well last new moon. I wrote two essays -- one for the Clarion West Newsletter and one for the Stonecoast Newsletter. I sent the first 50 pages of my novel and a synopsis out to Ginjer Buchanan at Ace.

And that seques into this new moon goals. First, thank you to Michaela Rossenburg Herman and Ellen Neuborne for proofing the first 50 pages for me. And thanks to Sandra McDonald for looking at my synopsis.

Sandra asked me some key questions about the synopsis that made me realize the end of my book wasn't really working. So I took some questions to Plotbusters (my novel crit group) and we had a wonderful converstion about the book. And I ended up throwing out 11 chapters. Oops. Actually throwing out is a rather large statement. Some of the content can stay, like dialog. But mostly it's a do over.

As I looked at what Sandra gave me and at my notes from PB, is was able to outline a whole new ending for the book. So then I wrote my synopsis according to that outline.

But that means I've got a lot of writing to do this new moon. I've already rewritten two of the 11 chapters. 8 to go. But I'm feeling hot and reenergized now that I actually know what the theme of the book is about.

And that was the problem folks. That is what Sandra made me realize. I had all the plot worked out -- but the theme went askew somewhere. Now I feel like I really have a book -- a story that holds together and is satisfying, and a protagonist who, with all her flaws, really learns something about herself and the world. Cool, huh?

My essay for the Clarion West Newsletter is based on the blog entry I did on collaboration. I truly feel that I found the center of my book due to the people listed above. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

And one more thing. I did a paper on Barth Anderson's "Patron Saint of Plagues" in which Bart states that he threw out something like 10,000 words in the middle of the book because he realized he needed to make a chance. Jim Kelly, who was my mentor at Stonecoast at the time, commented on the paper, asking me if I thought I could make that kind of decision. Well, I guess the answer is YES.

So my new moon goal is to rewrite the end of the book and have it read just in case Ginjer asks for it. What's your' goal?

Today I had a blast from the past waiting for me when I checked my e-mail. My old boy friend from high school, Kevin Kelly, sent me an e-mail just checking in. Wow. That was so totally cool! I've only kept up with one person from my Ohio days so it was good to hear from Kevin.

It also made me take a moment and think about how far I've come and how different I am from the person I was then. I got a strong foundation from growing up as I did in a small town with a dad who was a cop and mom who wasn an executive secretary. There were 500 people in my graduating class -- and we were the only high school in town. It was a great place to grow up.

But I such a different person. I've accomplished things that I thought were impossible back then. I've traveled the world, when I was just thrilled to go to California. I've met some of the actors I idolized (Cesar Romero who played the Joker on Batman! William Shatner!). My mom and dad got to be extras in a "Promised Land" I produced.

I've seen Barbra Streisand in concert. Back then, I have to admit, I used to write her letters and send her birthday presents. Oh my god was I ever that young and naive?

Yesterday I sent off the first 50 pages and a synopsis of my novel to Ginjer Buchanan at Ace. Back then I was writing really terrible angst-filled poetry.

It's fun to remember. Thanks, Kevin, for a taste of what was.

The new issue of SHIMMER is now available at www.shimmerzine.com. This issue has my story "The Girl Who Lost Her Way". For those of you who have seen the rough draft of my short film, this is the story I adapted.

I read a few of the stories so far. The M. K. Hobson story is fabulous. As is the Tinatsu Wallace story. You can get a taste for the issue here: http://www.shimmerzine.com/2008/08/07/issue-nine-spring-2008/#more-200

A very cool thing that Shimmer does is make author pages, where you can go and read all about how the story in the issue came about. My autor page is here: http://www.shimmerzine.com/2008/08/07/issue-nine-spring-2008/#more-200

Okay, enough shameless self promotion. On to Mad Max.

Max thinks I'm dense. I've been noticing this over the last week or so. He decides he wants something, I decide not to give it to him, but he thinks I don't know what he wants and keeps trying to show me.

So this morning I was eating cereal. I'm loathe to admit it, but I actually made him a little pyrex bowl of cereal as well. I like to eat my breakfast in my big oversized chair while watching the TODAY show.

Max finished his in a flash, of course. I ignored his attempts to get at my bowl. So finally he jumps down, gets the pyrex bowl in his mouth, carries it over to me and jumps up on the chair, placing it in my lap. I don't know what Paul was thinking when he got a smart dog.

I just read about this on Casacorona's blog.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/30/police_raids/index.html?source=newsletter

I'm totally in shock. How can this be happening in this country? I don't usually like to talk politics -- but our freedoms have so deteriated since Bush got into office. And Now McCain chooses a woman for vice president, thinking that women are interchangeable.

Have you seen her record on environmental issues?
So you know she's part of a ladies group fighting for prolife?

I'm outraged at what happened in Minnesota. But I'm scared shitless that there's more to come.