Well, I've entirely rewritten it, and I'm very happy with it now. Irish folk music figures heavily in the story; my male lead plays in a Celtic fusion band and receives an Abell ZF-360 pennywhistle as a gift.

As I went through the printed manuscript today, catching tiny errors on virtually every page, I also made a list of all the songs I mention in the story. Most are Irish folk songs, but some are not. Here's the playlist, with links where available:

"Katie Campbell's Rambles"

"The Green Gates"

"Bold Doherty"

"Summer is Coming"

"The Water is Wide"

"My Funny Valentine" 

"Clohinne Winds"

"As I Roved Out"

"Strange Fruit"

"Body and Soul"

"Stella By Starlight"

"Ships Are Sailing"

"The Lakes of Coolfin"

"Horo Johnny"

"I's the B'y"

"The Creggan White Hare"

"The Dawning of the Day"

"The Flower of Magherally"

"Green Grow the Rushes" 

"An Paistin Fionn"

"Rant and Roar"

"Blackbirds and Thrushes"

"The Waxies' Dargle"

"The Wind that Shakes the Barley"

"The Lark Ascending"

I wrote a post about writing and the loss of my father at Mommy Authors. I'd love to know what you think.

Michael Stanley Tanner

11 August 1946 - 3 March 2013

"Spring and Fall"

To a young child 

Margaret, are you grieving 
Over Goldengrove unleaving? 
Leaves, like the things of man, you 
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? 
Ah! as the heart grows older 
It will come to such sights colder 
By and by, nor spare a sigh 
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; 
And yet you will weep and know why. 
Now no matter, child, the name: 
Sorrow’s springs are the same. 
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed 
What heart heard of, ghost guessed: 
It is the blight man was born for, 
It is Margaret you mourn for.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1880

I'll miss you, Dad.

I've been pondering all things meta this week.

Well, not all things. But definitely many things meta-related-to-the-arts.

I've been playing a game inside my head as I've done the dishes or driven people to sports practices or tried to get back to sleep in the middle of the night after going to the bathroom for the fourteenth time.

(It's just one of the many crazy games I play all alone in this head o' mine, another being "List all the adjectives with the suffix '-id.'")

The game is this: list all the films about film. Now all the songs about songs. Now all the poems about poetry. Now all the theater about theater. And now (my favorite part) all the fiction about fiction.*

Ready? Go.

Films About Film
(or TV About TV)

The Player
Singin' in the Rain
The Truman Show
30 Rock
Studio 60
The Simpsons
Stranger than Fiction (borderline: a film about fiction writing)

Songs About Songs, Singers, and/or Singing

"Hey, Mister Tambourine Man" (The Byrds)
"Thank You for the Music" (ABBA)
"Sing a Song" (Earth, Wind, and Fire)
"I Write the Songs" (Barry Manilow)
"If Music Be the Food of Love" (Shakespeare/Purcell)
"Piano Man" (Billy Joel)
"Rock and Roll Band" (Boston)
"Killing Me Softly" (Roberta Flack)
"The Day the Music Died" (Don McLean)
"This is Not a Love Song" (Public Image, Ltd.)

Poems About Poetry

"Essay on Criticism" (Alexander Pope)
"Don Juan" (parts of it; Lord Byron)
"Ars Poetica" (Archibald MacLeish)
"The Uses of Poetry" (William Carlos Williams)
"There is no frigate like a book" (Emily Dickinson)
"The High-Toned Old Christian Woman" (Wallace Stevens)

Theater About Theater

All That Jazz (Well, okay. It's a film about theater.)
Kiss Me, Kate
The Taming of the Shrew
The Producers
A Chorus Line
42nd Street
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Hamlet
Picasso at the Lapin Agile
The Mousetrap

Fiction About Fiction (and this would be my wheelhouse, people)

The Princess Bride (William Goldman)
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (Susanna Clarke)
Little, Big (John Crowley)
Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)
The Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio)
Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes)
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Italo Calvino)
Anything written by Jasper Fforde
The Neverending Story (Michael Ende)
English Music (Peter Ackroyd)
The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
An awful lot of Kurt Vonnegut
And a whole bunch of that Pratchett genius
Leaf by Niggle (J.R.R. Tolkien)
A Series of Unfortunate Events (Lemony Snicket)
Atonement (Ian MacEwan)
The Dark Tower, etc. (Stephen King)
Possession (A.S. Byatt)
The Book of Three (Lloyd Alexander)
A Princess of Roumania, etc. (Paul Park)

What about you? Can you add to the lists?

*LDS readers, here's a fun study topic: revelation about revelation. And extra credit: revelation about Revelation.

My author copies of The Book of Jer3miah: Premonition arrived late yesterday. What a thrill! I am delighted with how it turned out. The official publication date is March 4th, but apparently it's in stock and available right here. Treat yourself to a copy, and the next time I see you, I'll sign it! 

Intrigued by the cover, but want to know more about the story? Watch this:

Last bit of fun for today: the winner of the free e-copy of Michelle Muto's Don't Fear the Reaper is Rhi R.! Congratulations! PM me your email address, and I will make sure you get the download code as soon as possible. 

• Rows of lit street lamps
• Fog
• Overgrown gardens
• Empty lots
• Abandoned toys
• The gloaming
• Light streaming out of windows, seen from the dark outside
• Old people sitting at bus stops
• The ocean
• Antique books
• Basements and attics
• Ancient oak trees
• Offhand comments
• Really good poetry
• Music in minor keys
• England -- France -- Italy -- Switzerland
• Autumn

 What inspires you?

Haunted by memories of her murdered twin, Keely Morrison is convinced suicide is her only ticket to eternal peace. But in death, she discovers the afterlife is nothing like she expected. Instead of peaceful oblivion or a joyful reunion with her sister, Keely is trapped in a netherworld on Earth with only a bounty-hunting reaper and a sarcastic demon to show her the ropes.

I do love stories about the afterlife, and Michelle Muto has written a good one. This novel is just how I like them--dark, but with the promise of redemption. Plus, the title rocks--Blue Öyster Cult's single is one of my favorite songs from my youth. (I'm also excited to read her latest book, The Haunting Season. I just downloaded it, and it is creepyyyyyy!)

Would you like a free e-copy of Don't Fear the Reaper? Leave me a comment, and on Wednesday, February 6, I'll choose one winner via random number generator. 

I'm pleased to announce three awards for which Dispirited has been nominated:

1) Best Adult Speculative Novel -- Whitney Awards -- Finalists will be announced February 7th!

2) Dispirited's cover is a finalist for LDS Publisher's annual Best Cover Award -- go vote now! The deadline is midnight on January 30th and the winner will be announced on January 31st. 

3) Best YA Fiction -- AML's annual awards -- The winner will be announced at AML's banquet sometime in March!

Keep your fingers crossed! 

I know a few people who seem addicted to chaos. They appear to be drama magnets, emotional "black holes," if you will. It seems like something is always going wrong for them, and then those of us around them get to hear all about the crisis-of-the-moment at length. Again and again. 

There's a fine line between expressing frustration and chronic complaining. I'm not judging these acquaintances. I try to offer help and support, or just a listening ear, depending on what's needed and/or requested.

Here's the thing. I'm sure that what I see in these perceived drama addicts is much more about me than it is about them. Indeed, my observations direct me inward and remind me of what I need to change and repair in my own life and psyche.

I'm grateful for opportunities to practice compassion and empathy. I treasure the luxury of feeling understood and loved despite my many faults, and so I attempt to communicate my understanding and love of others and their difficulties whenever possible.

But I am often struck by how exhausting and contagious negativity can be. For someone like me, who already struggles with depression and anxiety, that negativity is as dangerous as a riptide. I find it's better just to stay out of the water and hold out a helping hand from the safety of the shore. 

One of my long-term goals is to be drama-free. Of course, bad things happen to us all. But when trials come my way, I hope to be able to take them in stride. I'm fine with grieving, or even ranting and moping--privately, to those I trust--when appropriate. But if I am to live in a world that is less chaotic, the calm amidst the storm needs to start with me.

I spent last Friday and Saturday in a Huntington Beach condo that was four blocks from the ocean. I did not surf; I did not sunbathe, even though the weather was sunny and warm. Nope--I sat in a quiet, empty room, all alone, and wrote like a madwoman. 

How does a madwoman write, you ask? 

• She leaves her extremely supportive family behind in order to spend two days at an internet-free Writers' Retreat.
• She uses an extremely detailed outline, turns on Write or Die, and cranks out between two and three thousand words per hour.
• She laughs, she frowns, and she cries as she types.
• She kills off a beloved character and knows it's exactly the right thing to do.
• She texts her accountability partner at regular intervals--either to crow or to vent.
• She eats a good amount of high-quality chocolate.
• She also takes a few breaks with her partner in crime, who sits in the adjoining room and does virtually the same thing. 
• And at the end of the weekend, she does the math and finds she has met her goal: she's finished her draft and written 35,000 new words. (Right now, the entire manuscript is roughly 95,000 words long.)

Impossible? Not when you've trained for it. It was the equivalent of competing in an Ironman: death and despair for a newbie, but totally doable for someone who has conditioned and worked consistently over a considerable amount of time. 

I couldn't have done it without Rachel Aaron's help. Over a year ago, I read her blog posts that led to her ebook on writing faster and more efficiently, and I've been working ever since to improve both the quality and quantity of my writing. (Get the book! It's worth way more than the 99 cents you'll spend. Get Rachel's other books, too.)

I don't write this to brag; I write this to tell you what's possible when you do the daily work that Steven Pressfield and so many other pros prescribe.  

And now? I had thought I'd jump into revisions right after the holiday weekend, but, like a post-Ironman athlete, I found I've needed a couple of extra days off to recover. But today, a week after my marathon, I'm ready to tackle the rewrites to make the story I love much, much better. 

Last weekend was my first Writers' Retreat. Would I do another? Absolutely. But I'm glad I was prepared to make it worth every minute away from my family. All the writing I do when I'm at home in the thick of my life--that's where I make the real advances.