Treading Water

Two more rejections in the mail since we came home; one for Promiscuous Mode, and one for World of Mirrors. Promiscuous Mode was the novel the writing group absolutely loved, and one agent loved it but did not offer representation. World of Mirrors is my favorite right now, maybe because I have lavished so many rewrites and so much attention on it, and it takes place in an unknown corner of Europe at an interesting time in history. Well, that and and few dollars will get you a latte.

I have to confess the expensive coffee craze leaves me cold. A nice strong cup of plain old coffee with a splash of milk for me. A chilled sweet Starbucks Frappucino, quaffed right out of the bottle tastes great, and I mention it so often in Festival Madness that the Starbucks folks should pay me, but of course there is no real reason to believe that Festival Madness will sell either. Right now the beginning really sucks. I mean bad.

I am feeling pulled hither and thither by my writing group, how-to writing advice I read, "the market" and all of the voices a writer hears and maybe heeds. Mixed messages drive me crazy. So I'm think I'm going to do my own beginning, something I like, and everyone else can go suck eggs. Suck eggs, suck it up, makes little difference.

My garden is lovely now, except where the bunnies have been bad. The bunnies have been very bad this year, and they ate the entire lily after it bloomed, unless the bunnies are really deer. Always hard to know. The bunnies are going to encounter some cayenne soon. They can scamper down to the slough for a drink if they need it. The bull frog croaks regularly, but the tree frogs are silent. The baby chipmunk eats the thistle seed. The birds, squirrels, racoons, etc., and done a number of the thistle seed feeder AND the suet feeder, so I went out to Best Nest and ordered lifetime guaranteed thistle and suet feeders. Enough of this silliness.

The red squirrel found a mate and there are tiny squirrels chasing around. And the oriole comes and serenades in late afternoon. Tonight we had insalata caprese with homegrown tomatoes and our own basil. The basil had a strong taste. Invigorating.

In The Writer today I read about landscape terminology and how when used correctly, it can inform one's fiction, as in Cold Mountain. That was pretty cool. Barrows and swales and mesas and arroyos.

We (the neighborhood) have a new calf, a little brown critter four days old. Significant Other saw it yesterday. When we went over to feed the cows and admire the calf, we arrived just as the young bull had escaped, and the cows were going crazy, the farmer was trying to catch the bull who kept charging into the street, the partically blind sheep dog was not helping at all, and chaos ruled, so we left. Later I saw the bull, who is really a sweetie, back in the pasture. The cows were very upset. They are interesting creatures and have subtle differences in personality.

Let's hear it for bad rabbits, obstreperous Scottish Highland cattle, and the other creatures in my corner of the world. They give me joy, a commodity otherwise in short supply.

Grapeshot