Admin Note

Your hearts are back. Mollie is going to be futzing with the blog this weekend, possibly moving it, so if things go wonky (they shouldn’t) wait until Monday to see if whatever it is straightens out then. We live to serve.

Working Wednesday, April 29, 2020

I got so hungry for normal yesterday that I went out for a Big Mac. I’m not a huge fan of Big Macs, but I just wanted to go through a drive-through and get a burger and fries like a normal small-town person who was too lazy to cook. Which meant I had to get in the car and drive into town, and it was a gorgeous day, really stunning with the sun and all the new green and balmy breezes, just Edenic. And because I was driving and happy and about to go face down in fat and protein, I relaxed and my mind wandered back to Lily and scenes started going through my head, bits and pieces, so much fun and then something occurred to me and I almost drove off the road. (I’ll talk about it on Friday in the Lily 6 notes.). I was so enthused I put a chocolate shake on the McD’s order, which knocked me off my socks–not supposed to have that much sugar–and I fell into a really deep sleep and had this incredibly detailed dream that gave me the end of Lily. None of the details or the hard work, you understand, I just know what happens at the end. It even fits in the whole “taking care” theme. I’m pretty sure the Girls ordered that milkshake. Also, I may be a genius.

So this week I worked by going to McDonald’s. What did you do?

Argh Author: Gin Jones’s Six Cloves Under

Our own Gin Jones has a new book out, Six Cloves Under, the first book in her Garlic Farm series:

App developer Mabel Skinner is about to discover something rotten on her late aunt’s garlic farm—and it’s not the compost heap . . .

Mabel doesn’t know a stinkin’ thing about garlic farming. She knows how to develop an app and how to code. But when her aunt, Peggy Skinner, dies suddenly, Mabel inherits her Stinkin’ Stuff Farm in western Massachusetts. She arrives during peak harvest time—with three days to bring in the entire crop before rain can destroy it.

But Mabel has an even bigger problem: she suspects her aunt’s “accidental death” was murder. As she digs for both garlic and clues, Mabel must contend with a mysterious crop thief, a rival garlic grower her aunt was suing, and a farmer who was after Aunt Peggy’s green-thumb secret. It’s up to Mabel to crack the code on a killer, before she joins the garlic bulbs six cloves under.

See all the links to buy on Gin’s website

Continue reading

Happiness is Dogs

Or cats. Or ferrets. Or goats in the streets. Birds. Bears who are not in my garbage. Pumas in crevasses. Nature cute in tooth and claw.

Hug something warm today. (Actually, it’s Hug an Australian Day today. We could do that. New Zealanders don’t need us, they already lucked out with Jacinda, but Australians have had a helluva year. Hug an Australian animal. We have several here on this blog . . .)

Cherry Saturday, April 25, 2020

. It’s Decorating Month. Because we don’t have enough to think about.

I’ve decorated my bedroom in used clothing, a wide assortment of Dove chocolates, empty Diet Coke cans, a laptop, an iPad, a cellphone, and three dogs. It’s the I-May-Be-Losing-My-Mind style. I did change the sheets this week, so I feel I’ve done my part.

It’s also Adopt a Ferret Month, so you know, you have choices.

Lily 5 Notes

One of the things that’s really hard about discovery drafts is that they’re what Anne Lamott called “shitty first drafts.” The first time I write a scene, it’s lousy. That’s because I don’t know what it’s about until I see it. I can recognize that its repetitive, that there’s no conflict arc, that the characters don’t change, but I can’t fix it until I write it, almost always badly. Nora Roberts said that she can fix a bad page, but she can’t fix a blank page, and that’s where the discovery draft comes in.

Of course with Lily, there’s no pressure because I’m just writing what interests me, not trying to make a whole book. I do love these characters and that diner, but I have no idea what this is about, and I’ll never have to know because it’s just for Argh. So when I left the Seb-fights-with-Lily scene as boring as it was, I did that because there was nothing fun in it, it was just me exploring that relationship and giving Cheryl a cleaver. I love Cheryl with the cleaver. Seb, not so much.

What did interest me was the Fin-ordering-Lily-outside scene. I really liked that for several reasons. Continue reading