The Surfing Was Great

I have returned! We are back from vacation in the land of fruits and nuts--tanned, a little broken, sore, wiser, and full of sights, sounds, and smells.

We visited with family and traveled down memory lane to the places my husband once called home. He pointed out the changes time had wrought--some of them sweeping, some not so large.

My own goal was to commune with the waves, and I did. The ocean fills me with peace, mostly. Seeing the light shining through the green-tinged waves, watching the silt glint as the roller passed, waiting for the next big swell to lift me on it's shoulder, the icy embrace of the crashing, thundering salt--it all was medicine to my soul.

The denizens of the sea flashed past us as we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium: delicate bejeweled jellies, coasting hulks of tuna and shark, forests of undulating kelp, fey sea horses, spritely puffins. I could have spent several more hours cruising the rooms, but we closed the place out and went on down the Big Sur.

I got a pebble from Pebble Beach. We found sand dollars at Morro Bay. We saw beaches full of basking, bedraggled elephant seals in their catastrophic moulting season. We explored tide pools, scampering over rocks and through fly-blown heaps of steaming seaweed. My Hubs slipped on a rocking boulder and probably broke or cracked some ribs. He is still in agony when he turns wrong or coughs.

This time the ocean was up against some stiff odds. Little annoyances, like urchins, crept in and chipped away at my well-being. I won't enumerate them here, but they left me questioning myself and my abilities. I have no answers yet.

Luckily the ocean had help from some extremely large entities with needles for leaves. The Sequoias' massive girth stretched up from the guts of the world, pulling the sun into their gargantuan tunnelsomeness, dwarfing us once again. Moro Rock let us look clear out to the end of the world where the air gets thin and misty.

Half Dome and El Capitan dwarfed us as well. They and Bridle Veil Falls put me firmly in my place, to my chagrin. It wasn't a comfortable spot to be, showing me my finite nature and limitations, despite wishing I had my pre-ballet (Or is it the fighting that did it?) knees back and could still climb well.

At San Simeon I found a pebble beach one morning, with the mist lifting off it. The sea-washed pebbles glittered in the rising sun, reminding me that I, too, was once like them: rough and plain at first. The crashing surf had pounded them, knocked the sharp edges off and polished them into smooth, elegant beauties. I just need to be able to endure the process without being turned into sand.

Iron Your Space Suits

I'd like to know what the deal is with having every hero be in his early twenties, single, ripped, and superhumanly talented at everything. The girls all have humongous chests, are fabulously gorgeous, effortlessly buff, and better than guys at all martial arts coughlauracroftcough. They never have cracked nails, bad hair days, zits, or sudden fits of hiccuping. They don't trip, stumble, or fall flat on their faces in front of important people (like smokin' hot boyfriend fodder).

All I can think of is that we want what we don't have. We (okay I) glance in passing at the magazines on the end caps of the grocery store aisles because those "beautiful people" live in houses the size of Rhode Island. Who wouldn't want to breeze through one of those babies with their roller skates on, or swim in their massive tubs? (I've nannied in one of those. It was a blast!) They drive the indigo Ferraris I can only drive when I'm asleep.

Not that I want their life, but I'd sure like the adventure.

Occasionally, though, I want a heroine who has grown kids. I want to read about someone who now and then has their back go out on a stunt. Sometimes they've got to run into something and get a really gargantuan bruise--the kind that makes people ask them what the heck they've been up to to get a monstrous bruise like that. I want someone who starts out kind of blubbery and finally loses a ton of weight running after bad guys. She's got to huff and puff like a freight train, though.

And maybe the dude who loves her has a bum knee and occasional dandruff. Yeah. That's a little bit about what makes The Incredibles so appealing to me. They had a family. They weren't fixed in amber at one point in their life, past which they could never get. Louis McMaster Bujold does that with her Miles Vorkisigan books. She needs to write more of them, though. Miles might be slowing down, but he still needs to have more adventures. Anne McCaffrey did those in hers. The whole family got into the mix. Bring it on!

Can you tell I'm a voracious reader? Yep. I take a book (or my lamented kindle which is taking a dirt nap...sigh) everywhere.

So when I say that this age group (and weight class?) has been neglected, I know what I'm talking about. I eat sci fi, fantasy, historical romance, historical fiction, paranormal, mystery, historical mystery...like strawberry cheesecake. Mnom nom nom nom.

We don't suddenly dry up and blow away when we get to thirty-five. Life has to go on. I'm sure that if people were on space ships exploring the galaxy they wouldn't just fly home every time they had a person pass their twenty-seventh birthday. There would be some old bats on there, plugging away at what they were doing before.  And not all of them would be mopping or serving food in the mess hall.

There would be families. Because who could just leave their family behind forever? How could you just say "Hasta la vista" to your mom until the end of time? "See ya later, Dad. You'll most likely be dead if I ever come back to Earth." Or, "Sorry, son, you'll have to live with Grandma now for the rest of your life because I'm bailing on you for a gig in space."

Let's see some representation for the teenagerly-challenged. After all, what you are, we once were. And what we are, you will become...if you're lucky. So iron your space suits and be sure to pack Tiger Balm and maybe a donut to sit on. We're going to space.

(By the way, I'm not that old. Really. I'm actually twenty-five in an alternate reality. Yeah. That's the (possibly true on some level but most definitely false) story I'm sticking with. And I went climbing for my last birthday. Fact.)

Girdle Explosion

We took the boy to the airport on Wednesday. The journey was harrowing to my nerves. Right now I'm experiencing that feeling when a chubby lady takes off her girdle--explosively fabulous.

Let's just say that H's idea of what needed to be done first and my ideas rarely jived. He'd usually get around to my list--eventually. Which meant that for a few months just prior to June 5th I would suggest things he might want to get started on (like applying for school and getting his passport and visa going) and he would put it off in favor of more entertaining ideas.

It's not that he was wholly disobedient or fractious about the whole thing. He just had an agenda unmatched to anyone else's. Which made for some aggravation on his parents' parts. He never did apply for school. He'll learn later what a huge mistake that was.

So when it came time to get his passport we were rushing around like chickens on hacking day. We found out several important things:
1. The post offices in this town don't communicate with each other much or well.
2. No post offices in this benighted city have passport capabilities.
3. The ones on-line must be frequented by people who own their own jets.
4. Walmart remains Hick-city (Someone in their facility accidentally removed all passport photo capabilities). No offense, Walmart.
5. Walgreens gets it done--but not all the way done. (We had to go clear back home to change and then go clear back to Walgreens and pay full price for the second set of pictures. They won't just copy them for you.) No offense, Walgreens. You at least did the job.
6. Prayer works.

Number six explanation: We'd finally gotten all the required photos and pre-paperwork squared away and were headed downtown to the courthouse to make this a done deal. I found that there is construction down there. Now normally navigating the downtown area is a headache. There are all kinds of one-way streets and parking is a mother of a headache.
With construction and detours, the problem is compounded exponentially. Traffic was snarled so badly that I was sure we'd miss our appointment. I told H. we needed to pray. So we did. Suddenly the knot untied, and straight ahead there was a huge parking garage, with the courthouse just a few hundred yards away.
Hot Diggety!
We got in, got the paperwork expedited, and got out in under half an hour...a record.

Then his visa thing came along. I don't think the boy ever completely read the manual they give prospective missionaries with their call (a letter that tells them where they're going to serve). Or at least he didn't until the bitter end. He would have noticed that the paper about the visa said two different things: "Get going on your visa in April." And the other, "Wait until a month before you leave to do your visa. There were some tense calls to the travel office.

So it came down to the last few days. H. was still setting up visits to his stable job to go horseback riding (Didn't happen...sigh.) and game appointments and movie appointments. I was looking at his room thinking "That's a huge load to pack up. I wonder if he'll finish." The joke, my friends, is on me. It's still a massive pile of rubbish and he was the clean one.

The day before he left he was supposed to meet with the Stake President to get set apart (it's a prayer to make him a missionary for those who don't know) at eight pm. We had to get a few little things at the store and then we were going swimming and he was getting his hair cut by someone in beauty school he'd promised to help out. Then we'd go home and get ready to go at a nice, leisurely rate. Ha!

That was my idea. The reality made me a padded room candidate. The shopping took much of the day in a car with no AC. It was hot enough to bake cookies on the roof. We went to the bank and (according to the Hubs) did all the wrong things. There was no swimming involved. There was no eating involved. There were snarky comments because the car was the peanut gallery. And unbeknown to anyone outside H's skin, he was slated to go to the movies with a girl between the haircut and the Stake President. And she wasn't even the one who cut his hair.

The other thing we didn't know was that the Stake Clerk had called and told someone that we were meeting him at six instead of eight. Our house became a piranha feeding frenzy of well-dressed pacers as we tried fruitlessly to get hold of H. Apparently he was obedient at the movies and turned off his phone.

So he was too late to meet with the Stake President. The only other time was the next morning. He had to be in the airport at 5:05am. The Pres. set the meeting for 5:15. I freaked until the Hubs said they never whine if people are late. I begged to differ, but what could we do? It was nice enough that he was meeting us before the birds got up.


So we all trundled into our clothes at O'dark hundred and headed off in separate cars (Hubs had to go to work), except for the eldest son, who I called and woke up. I found that the gas gauge read bone-dry. We finally made it there in the nick and the boy got his blessing.

Then I had to do something I swore never to do again. I had to pay for short-term parking. (I'd sworn not to ever park there because once when I was eight or so months pregnant and on bed rest, the ticket taker person had made me waddle back through the whole parking lot looking for my lost stub, or pay for a whole day's worth of parking.) It turned out to be sort of painless, though.

As I hugged my son good-bye thoughts roiled around in my head about FIDDLER ON THE ROOF when the father is kissing his girls good-bye as they went out into the world (also in Russia), possibly never to be seen or heard from again. Those searing thoughts battled with the ones about other missionaries who had major health emergencies there and had to endure operations with no anesthesia.

One word, one mistake can get a person in heap-loads of trouble over there. H. is a joker. He rarely has a serious picture. He says things. And he'll already be right there next to Siberia. Yeah. I'm worrying for two years. I bawled clear home. And every time I look at his stuff, I weep again.

And then I remember that H. is God's beloved servant, doing God's work. Heavenly Father, who engineered the world and put us, His creations, here is fully capable of taking care of one little missionary boy. He juggles thousands of them already. Now I need to let Him take care of my worries. After all, His Son already shouldered everyone's burdens.

The field is white and ready to harvest. Farewell and Godspeed, my son.

Idea Generators

Someone recently asked me how I center myself for writing. It's a good question. Actually I spend way too much time dinking around with Facebook and emails. So by the time I get around to working, I simply kick myself in the bum and tell myself to quit wasting time and get to work. Myself sounds a whole lot like my dad...;o) 
Seriously, I generally play a game or two of Beleaguered Castles or Solitaire to loosen up my brain and then I'm good to go. Actually sitting down and opening the program works wonders.

I get most of my ideas and inspiration when I'm lying in bed in the morning. I rarely get to do that, however, because I'm incredibly busy. So the stories have to unfold while I'm doing other mindless things. I also rumble through scenarios while hanging clothes, especially at night. (I have six kids and several volunteer jobs. Lots of mindless jobs in there.)
I read like a freak--almost anything I can get my hands on. I take a book or my Kindle everywhere. I even read while I walk. Mostly I don't bump into things unless it's dark and I'm reading with a flashlight while walking. If you're looking to generate ideas, you've got to read a great deal. Stuff the time you don't spend writing, with reading.
I try to keep current on information as much as I can. All kinds of scientific breakthroughs catch my fancy (Bucky balls, Aerogel, polymers, etc). The list is endless.

At any given time there's usually a traffic jam of ideas in my head. Scenes and ideas for new novels are all backed up at a light and waiting for me to bring them to the public. It's the editing that takes me the longest.

I come up with ideas several different ways:
*Sometimes I come up with a kickin' character first. People like Vari Faro or Larkin will bang at the inside of my head and beg me to let them out. Then I plunge that character into as much trouble as they can stand. Sometimes it's more than they can stand. At times they've revolted and made me change the story. 
I recently tried to kill off one of my characters at the end of the book and she came and kicked me and told me she wasn't dying. So I let her live.
*Sometimes it's a story that unfolds. I have one I haven't written yet about a brother and sister who live under London Bridge and pick through the mud for abandoned or lost goodies. That story nearly sprang full-fledged from my head. I'm pretty much waiting until I make enough so I can actually go to London to do research for this book. Sigh.....
*At times it's just an idea that begins like a little seed and takes over. My WATCHERS series grew from my latent rebel tendencies. It ended up being a five-book series, which I'm still polishing between writing three other books.
*I like to take two disparate ideas and crash them together and see what emerges alive. FIRETHORN was like that. I wanted a character that was wildly out-of-the-ordinary without being the same old vampire or werewolf. Kerry was born in all her woodiness. Then I stuck her in high school with all the regular witchy cheerleaders and geeks. I'm hoping it'll appeal to teens and tweens by the bus-load.
*I've gotten ideas from dreams. I have a picture book I haven't written yet, that was such a vivid and color-splashed dream, that it's indelibly ingrained in my mind. I will write that book when I can scrape up time to paint the pictures. It's going to be breath-taking. Someday.
*My first published book SMALL DECEPTIONS grew out of a wish for more books like Jane Austen's. I'd run out of hers and most of the good spin-offs and wanted something more. I'm always looking for a well-researched historical romance with some meat to it. SUMMERHOUSE was another book like that. It's a paranormal Regency romance.
*It also helps to do a loose outline. I plug things into that outline and keep fleshing it out. That helps me keep the book on track so it doesn't stray off into murky byways.
*Write something every day, whether it's on your W.I.P. or a limerick about lawn gnomes. Keep the generator primed and oiled.

My main goal is not to swipe from anybody. Ever. If it's already been done, why write it? Same with movies. Why all the re-dos when there are perfectly good brand new stories out there screaming to hit the big screen? It annoys me that publishers look for books that are current but they also want fresh. That's a knife-edged line. I write what I want to and hope.

My main trouble is in getting books sent to publishers. I never feel they're polished enough. I do have one in submission (PIVOT POINT is the title so far) and A TERRIBLE MAJESTY is nearly out of the polishing stage. FIRETHORN is going to Beta today (thank you Courtney).

That said, it's time to get back to editing. Cheers!

Memorials

medwaytowns.org.uk

We went to the graveyard today to care for my husband's little sister's grave. She drowned in their pool when she was a year and a half old. We honor her every year at this time, as well as our other friends who sleep nearby.

I took my tin whistle this year and played taps on the hill overlooking the site. It was a truly powerful moment when I remembered why that song has such significance.

Their sun has set. The light of the old day has flown, and the stars come out, the moon with them. I see the moon as a promise of another day. The dead, too, have another day. They are eternal beings, everlasting, though we cannot comprehend their existence.

Do they linger to watch over us? Do they go straight to the judgment bench to await their fate? Do they have time to regret their past actions and inactions before they go? Or is it spirit prison or paradise for them immediately, to wait out the time before resurrection? Does time mean anything to them then?

Perhaps after we die, time no longer seems to run linearly and we can finally perceive its pond-like nature.

I wrote this to add to my Poetry Year offerings (Yes, I am bowing to the slippage of time and admitting that the poems are not flying off my pen due to frantic activity of another nature):

The mark of a man, of a truly great man
Is the work that he leaves behind.
When the chips are down
And the journey ends
He takes with him his acts and his mind.

Gone are the gold and the pow'r and the 'things'
And all of the trappings of life.
What then remains
Are important things
Like Actions and Children and Wife.

Lay not away what matters most
To grab for treasure and power
Leaving behind
The love you once had
For what makes you glad in the hour.

For riches are fleeting and power is gone
In the twinkling of an eye
But what will last
To eternity
Is the love God showers down from on high.

Gather ye now while you still have time
The gems which bear actual price
What you hold in your hand
Will be lost on the way
And your treasure is gone in a trice.

Hold to your family, loved ones, and friends
For they are the jewels; not the other
Their love is reward
Beyond grave, beyond death
Your father, son, sister, and mother.

Lay ye now down at the end of your days
With your loved ones hovering 'round.
And know with faith
They'll be there at last
When their bodies join yours in the ground.

The image at the top of the page is of a circle of rocks with another in the middle, which is the hiker's way of telling others that he or she has gone home. I think when I go, that is something I want marking my grave.

We'll see you later, M.

H. Linn Murphy

To Russia With Love

commons.wikimedia.org

I'm sending you a gift, Mother Russia. He's sweet and outgoing and hilariously funny. He has a firm testimony of Christ's love for His children. He also has a love for your language and people. Most of all, he has gifts to dispense to those who will listen.

He'll already be frozen solid, and homesick, bone-weary and confused when he gets there. But he'll be working like a freak to figure it all out. I hope there'll be a mother who will take my boy into her heart and keep him safe and fed. I hope she'll get his strange sense of humor and his penchant for practical jokes, though I've told him he has to toe the mark in every way if he wants the aid of the Father whom he serves.

I'm hoping you'll be patient with his lack of understanding. Two years of high school Russian won't go very far. He's a quick learner, though, so it should be not too bad.

Please don't send him your adorable girls. He's got plenty of distractions already. Just send people who want to learn the Gospel and embrace the Gift of the Savior. Send him opportunities to serve you willingly.

At the end of two years, please send him home chock-full of stories and wonderful memories and a greater love for your people. I'd prefer it if you could make sure he's in good health after all that walking and biking.

Your sincerely,
A Weepy Mom Who Loves Her Stellar Son

Numbers Nineteen and 20

April is over and I ran out of time, but I'm going to finish my commitment to myself to do thirty poems. So here are numbers nineteen and twenty:

Glistening and golden

The orb of the morning

Scales the firmament

To spread its glory

Over a bright new day. 

Silken flags

Mauve-tinged

Unfurl

And fill my being

With a gift

Of light

Most Beloved Friend

My Master sat down in the kitchen

His feet were all battered and sore

I washed them and lovingly dried them

While His stories He told, and much more.

He spoke of the publican sinner,

Of the harlot, the leper, the lame

He spun tales of the sewer of seedlings

Of the vinyarder's cleansing with flame.

When our brother was sick unto dying

Jesus tardily came to our aid

I thought him too late with his visit

On his deathbed our brother was laid.

He stetched forth His hand unto Laz'rus

And lifted him from his death bed

The grave clothes He lay from off him

And then Jesus anointed his head.

We stood at the cross with His mother

Our eyes now were swimming with tears   

Though He fainted with pain he was careful

Of His loved ones. He assuaged all our fears.          

I went to the garden to mourn him

I knelt at his stony tomb

The flowers ran riot around me

The air smelled of jasmine in bloom.

The mirrh I would use to anoint him

Lay still near my bended knee

For He was not there where we'd put him

He was gone to His Father, you see.

I wept that He'd left me behind him

This Man who had been my friend

His voice softly whispered, "Dear Mary

My going is in no way the end."

And now I must go on without Him

Finding my way home some day

He'll be waiting with arms out to hold me

I can't wait for his dear voice to say

"Mary, my well lov'ed sister

Your feet, bruised and battered and sore

You've walked dusty roads to find me

Welcome home from your travels once more."