Free-for-All

Friday Five

Posted on by Beth Hull

1. I made my first green smoothie yesterday, thanks to advice from my BFF K-Joy! It was a beginner’s green smoothie, with spinach, banana, and lots of blueberries. Actually quite tasty. Maverick loved it. Z loved it until she heard that I put spinach in there. I’ll make another one tomorrow. Wonder if Z will believe me when I say the green color comes from candy?

2. The YA Muses recently gave their website a “mindblowing” overhaul with a gorgeous redesign by Lia Keyes. They also expanded their ranks to include six New Muses, and I’m thrilled to be one of them. My first post went up last week. It was fairly straightforward to write a post talking about myself (although, yes, terrifying). But even worse is next week, when I’m supposed to write something about character. I think I’ve mentioned here before that I shy away from giving advice on craft because I am hardly an expert and have no street cred whatsoever. But I have to figure out something, and soon. It’s probably bad form to find a guest-poster for my first craft post…but I’m tempted.

3. What is it about kids and how no matter what one kid has, the other one wants it?

Never mind. I don’t think it’s just kids who do this.

4. Last week we had four excellent entries in Colonel Shifty’s Haiku Made Easy query critique/poem giveaway! I’ve decided to select more than one winner. In fact, we’ve got four winners. PB Rippey, Randi (AKA my mom), Myrna Foster, and Jamie Weil! Congratulations! I’ll be in touch to find out if you want a query critique or a poem.

5. A Shiny New Idea came to me the other day, giving me some energy & extra motivation to finish up the books I’m working on now. Once again, my Shiny New Idea is about something I know laughably little about. I think that’s part of the fun, though – exploring something so new that I start by borrowing children’s books on the topic. (Apologies to any local kids who need to do book reports on that subject anytime soon. I just cleared a shelf out of the library.)

Colonel Shifty’s Haiku Made Easy – Query Critique or Poem Giveaway

Posted on by Beth Hull

Okay, so I actually used to do this when I worked in a restaurant. On my close-out envelope, I’d write a few 5- and 7-syllable options and ask a coworker to choose and voila, a ready-made haiku. Indulge me?

1st Lines
sweet peppers pungent
giraffes wear lipstick
television light
traveling rat spa
little mermaid fin

2nd Lines
winter elephant in bloom
LEGO music Clair de Lune
ice cream melts antagonist
Wichita parades at noon
lavender shoe fetishist

3rd Lines
ickle ockle blue
scented miracle
Areola’s smile
superstar panda
jealous macaroon

Post your haiku in the comments! One entry per person, but feel free to create as many as you like. And feel free to switch things up a bit (substitute words or lines of your own or whatever). Winning haiku will be chosen by Colonel Shifty on Thursday, August 29th at 1:36 pm Pacific time. (Colonel Shifty is actually a gopher, so I will help him by drawing a name out of a hat or using some kind of number generator thingie.) The prize…the prize…um. (Can you tell I’m winging this whole thing?) I’ll critique your query letter. If you don’t have a query letter, or don’t want me to critique it, I will write you a poem. A personalized poem! By me! Yay!

The Arms of the Ocean

Posted on by Beth Hull

A beautiful thing happened this week. I finished typing in my handwritten revisions for Draft 3 of my surfing novel!!!!!!

Really, this is a small thing, and probably doesn’t deserve six exclamation points. Because I’d already made these revisions by hand on a printed-out copy, all I had to do was type them into the Scrivener document. So maybe it’s not that big of a deal.

But when I was having a crisis of confidence THE ENTIRE TIME I WAS TYPING, thinking THIS IS TERRIBLE with every keystroke, then, it starts to seem a bit bigger.

And when I was (not so) merrily type-type-typing away, I came to a note that said, “Need scene for such and such,” and I HADN’T WRITTEN THE SCENE. It’s a bit of a smack in the face to have to halt all the (easy?) typing work and actually create something from scratch. Even harder when, as I’m writing it, I’m thinking OH WAILY WAILY THIS IS TERRIBLE with every word.

So maybe it’s still awful (actually there’s no “maybe” about that), but now I can print the [expletive] thing out again and revise it once more.

That’s progress, my friends.

Also, how totally perfect is it that right after I finished typing, I had to pick up Z at school, and when I started the car, “Never Let Me Go,” by Florence + the Machine was playing – and the lyrics are:

In the arms of the ocean so sweet and so cold

And all this devotion I never knew went on

And the crashes are heaven for a sinner released

But the arms of the ocean delivered me

…which is absolutely awesome and goes with the surfing book SO WELL. It was unbelievably cool.

So big thing or little thing, typing up those changes feels big, and it’s gotten me excited again about a book I’ve been struggling with from the very beginning.

The Spider (CONTAINS PHOTOS, NOT FOR FAINT OF HEART)

Posted on by Beth Hull

First I saw this. And freaked out.

DSCN7718

Then I guessed it was an exoskeleton, & freaked out more.

Then I decided to vacuum the whole house (@Izandra thought the best solution was to move and burn the house down…I seriously considered that option first). And when I got ready to vacuum, I saw an extra leg behind the curtain loop. (Please note: that is a vase, not a cup.)DSCN7720

JMH_0647 spider

copyright Homes

I feel only a little bit bad being happy that Homes was here, sick in bed, and I could accidentally-on-purpose wake him up to remove the spider. He took a picture of it outside in its new habitat. (For the record, “the backyard” does not count as “way the hell away from our house EEEEEEE!” as per my instructions. However, the arachnid is no longer residing in our living room and I will have to be content with that.)

Friday Five, I’m Still Alive

Posted on by Beth Hull

1. I wish I could blame my bloggy-slackiness on a crashing laptop. But that happened just yesterday, & I’ve gone a month of Fridays with no posts. So I’ll blame something else. Summer! The heat! Too many good books to read! No imagination! Take your pick. It’s a buffet, so have a little of each if you like.

2. Homes surprised me with a car stereo for our anniversary. The CD player had been broken for about three years, so it was a huge surprise to get in the car on Wednesday and have Daft Punk (old stuff, not new stuff) blast from the speakers. A huge & awesome surprise! (A little Daft Punk goes a long ways for me, and it’s been switched out with pouty Lana del Rey, and some oldschool Cake. Next up is Sublime because summer isn’t complete without that. Then some Black Keys, then some Florence + the Machine…the drive to & from Z’s summer session just got SO much more fun!)

3. Plugging away at my surfing novel and trying to ignore the rat novel. It’s frustrating because I want to fix all the things in both stories, like, RIGHT NOW, but am limited by Maverick’s naptimes and my own mother-of-a-habitual-five-a.m.-waker-upper fatigue.

4. I should just do Friday Threes, because I run out of steam before I hit Four. Scrambling for something to say. So.

5. Books! I can always talk about books! Some new favorites: Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson (protagonist I love to love, antagonists I love to hate, and PERFECT balance of historical detail to story), Strands of Bronze and Gold by Jane Nickerson (creepy! Gothic! Just really…fun, & well-written to boot), Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys (seriously one of my favorite books of ALL TIME), The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr (love the piano, love a main character who is a tad harder to like than your average main character), Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie (much creepier than Disney, and no, I’d never read it). And that is all, happy Friday.