Old and New Sisters

I get to meet her next week. :)

And More Pictures...

Those last pictures... the ones where Woinshet looks sad? They were taken right after our postponed court date.

These ones were taken yesterday. I wonder if the grins are because they know they're being adopted?

I like to think so.

Winna has lost a tooth :)










July 22nd or bust!!!

yay!!!

The publishers got back to me quickly about the submission of my manuscript. The lady liked the manuscript enough (even though it was a rejection) that she gave me lots of detailed hints on how to make it submissible!!! That never happens, guys.

So... back to the word processor. I'm excited. It's so funny how it's hard to see the weaknesses and strengths in your own work, while you can easily pick apart even bestselling novels. But I've got somewhere to go now, and I know right what things to hit. Yay!!!

Here's to developing as an author.

delay in podcast novel release...

I hope nobody's been waiting with bated breath for me to start releasing my podcast series. I don't imagine anybody has. That's OK. I think bated breath is likely not too healthy.

There has been a possible development with the manuscript I was using for this podcast series, so I'm delaying publishing it. I've got only one episode left to record, so I'll go ahead and do that and edit all of them, so that if this development falls through I can just immediately start on the podcasting.

Sorry guys.

My plan: if this Novel gets to actually be a real book, I definitely have another one that I could podcast.

So... we'll see what happens. And sorry for getting the anticipation up and then bailing on you for the time being. What can I say? That's art, that's publishing. In the meantime, cross your fingers for me!

More pictures

Here are a couple more recent pictures. ;) We're flying out July 22nd... driving out to the inlaws on July 17. That's less than a month away. I can't quite fathom it.

My parents are in China right now. Right this very minute, they are in another country, going about the process of adopting another child. My sister, Lou Juan. Here's my mother's blog. She plans on updating periodically during the three weeks they spend there. This is such an interesting, turbulent time for my whole family. I'm glad to be going through this experience with my Mother... we'll be doing this together. It is such an amazing blessing. We started our processes years apart, but we are ending up bringing our children home within a few weeks of each other. I have to say it must be foreordained, and God is guiding us in these processes, and my mother and I are meant to be a support to one another in this. I plan on calling her and venting and listening to her vent and figuring things out together. I'm so, so glad.

And I'm glad to have a new sister, too. It still hasn't quite sunk in: Lou Juan is my sister. Winna and May are my daughters.

This world is amazing.

Walls Full of Memories

The beehive class visited an elderly couple in our ward tonight. I tend to be shy in group situations, especially where I don't know the people, and so I didn't say much. When the wife asked me to say something about myself, I mentioned that I live in Anna's old house. The stories started pouring out, just like they always do. Every time I mention Anna, and the fact that I live in her house, people rush to tell me the stories.

Anna was a small, refined woman of Danish descent. Her love and joy was her garden. I try to keep it up, apologizing under my breath to her as I clumsily root through her iris bed. I hacked her roses to pieces two years ago. This, the third year living here, I finally got them back so that they are blooming nicely and evenly.

She made rich, eight-course breakfasts. I chuckle over my toast crumbs, thinking of porridge--real, danish porridge--and rich cream, fresh berries, pastries, milk and fresh-squeezed juices.

She lived her whole life in the house she was born in, the house her father built close to the turn of the century. She had beautiful taste in furniture. It's all falling apart now, but the muted golds and greens, the brocades and the lovely upholstering, the fading wallpapers and soft gold draperies remain. The blinds are the wide, 1950's slatted wooden blinds; Skywalker has repaired a couple of them since we moved in.

One room upstairs has scalloped wood accents along the closets and cubbyholes, and a little closet bar down near the floor for little girls to reach. The window is a wide, sunny window that looks directly into the branches of the tall elm that grows there (and also shelters the hundreds of birds that like to relieve themselves on our car.) It is papered in pink, and when we moved in, there was an old, decaying pink rug covering the linoleum-on-boards-floor. My children play on a newer carpet remnant that I placed over the old rug. It pads their footsteps and gives them a soft place to sit.

The walls are thick and cool--adobe brick, made from materials right out of the ground where the house stands. When it was first built, it was warmed by chimneys. There are two at least, plastered over and papered, now only humps that run up along the walls for both stories.

One time when I was laying in the other upstairs room, the old, white cheesecloth curtain billowed out and suddenly I felt spooky, like a moment later I might see something I wasn't quite ready to see. The next day I got out all of my old family heirlooms: the bookcase my grandmother made, the pink china pitcher from four generations back, my husband's grandmother's clock-- and placed them in various spots, as if claiming "my space" in this place that had been built, and lived in, and existed so long, for Anna and her family.

The more I live here, the more I think how I wish I could peel back layers of wallpaper until I find the faded pink brick. Maybe I'd find a thumbprint in some mortar. Probably not; the people who built this house were fastidious--artisans. But I like to think I might, or that, if I put my ear up to the wall, I might hear something. These massive walls store heat and cold, keeping our spaces temperate far longer than the cheap tinder we build with now.

I wonder if they also store smells, voices, touch... skin cells?

I'll be sad to leave this place when the time comes. There's something to be said for living in the middle of a hundred years of memories.

The problem of greatness and LDS literature

Some discussions from one of my new favorite websites.

I'm beginning to become disillusioned with the LDS market. It's funny; I'll read some of the stories that Covenant (arguably the most prolific publisher of LDS fiction) puts out, and I cringe at the editing, and at the sort of sugary-shallow storytelling. I used to think it was because LDS people just beat around the bush. They're afraid to take chances in their writing, and so it winds up flat and somewhat empty of any real conflict.

I have a different opinion now, after having gone through the process of two separate submissions: it's the publishers, not the writers.

The publishers have their vision set on a certain narrow, defined audience. They have a preference for a certain style (that I have not really ever enjoyed all that much.) It chokes me up, to be sitting in front of a keyboard, trying to write real feelings and conflict, all the time feeling like these editors are reading over my shoulder--the picture in my mind includes collared dresses and penny loafers--tut-tutting because I used the word "crap" or had my character actually question his or her beliefs for a moment.

All right, I'm not being fair. But honestly... really? Really?

This is what I'm expected to come up with?

Well, that last one could possibly be interesting... the title could have sort of an overtone.

OK, sorry. I'm being snarky. I'm a tad frustrated. It's just... I mean, I want to write. Really write. Not just sell books. I want to write something that means something, that actually changes someone. I feel like that's almost impossible, though, in the current context of the LDS market. Maybe when people go into Seagull Book, they're looking for either doctrine, or some light fluff to help themselves feel better about their challenges. There's nothing wrong with fluff, either. Don't get me wrong. I just wish that there were a place for fiction that's a little deeper, too.

I'm going to start another story soon. I'm making this one firmly, unequivocably adult LDS fiction. I hope that this will improve my chances with Covenant or Deseret; the feedback Covenant has given me so far has been simply that they don't sell many Young Adult novels. Their big seller is Adult Fiction. I just don't know; I'm feeling so scattered over this new manuscript. How do you do "deep" and "real," without scaring the General LDS audience away?

Any suggestions will be most welcome.

And--update--I'm making good headway on recording the episodes of my podcast novel. I hope to have it finished and ready to start broadcasting in a couple of weeks.