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Friday Four – Ghost Blog Edition

Posted on by Beth Hull

1. This has become a ghost blog. Or it’s felt like that the past week, anyway. I didn’t consciously set out to ignore the internet and get so behind on everything, but it happened. I’m getting a little burnt out, I think (obviously: I’m too lazy to do a full Friday Five, so I’m abbreviating it to Friday Four). Not to mention, as soon as I sit down to do anything, I feel an overwhelming urge to take a nap.

2. That said, posts will probably be a little random (or not at all) over the next couple of months. You know, because of the BABY. He’s not out yet, but there isn’t much room left for him to grow in there. My skin is stretched to the breaking point, belly button is in a freakish flat-nearly-an-outtie stage. Maverick’s head is down, locked & loaded, ready to go. With so little time left, I want to focus on the more important things, like visiting with friends and family, reading lots of stories to Z, and revising my manuscript for the eleventeen-hundredth time. Oh, and napping.

3. The show “Hoarders” is really effing with my nesting instincts. I don’t usually watch reality television of any kind, but for some reason I find myself repeatedly sucked in by “Hoarders,” often when Homes isn’t around to make snarky comments about my viewing habits. It’s really hard to want to collect things for Maverick, and revel in the onesies I so cleverly/tightfistedly/hoardingly saved from when Z was a baby, when I see mentally ill people making similar decisions about tax books from 1998 and bags full of unworn clothing and five-year-old containers of yogurt. I’m compensating by throwing out old magazines, but I usually flip through them first, which puts me into another, yes, NAP.

4. Maggie tagged me with this Lucky 7 Meme, and it sounded like fun.

Open your novel-in-progress and do the following:

  • Go to page 77.
  • Go to line 7.
  • Copy down the next 7 lines, sentences, or paragraphs as they are written.
  • Tag 7 new authors. [I’m not doing this step, because I’m a (lazy) jerk. But if you’re a writer, feel free to  post your lines in the comments below. Or if you prefer, put them in a blog post of your own and link to it in the comments.]

Here are some lines from my newest work-in-progress:

After we find my van and Kyle finds my keys in my purse and gets me settled in the passenger’s seat, I chatter to him the whole way to my house. I have no idea what I’m talking about, but he’s a really good listener.

“Is your mom or dad home?” he asks.

“Yeah, my mom.”

“Will she be mad that you’re sloshed?”

“Nope.” [In the interest of parallelism, I very much wish this excerpt ended in the word Nap. “Nope” is close, but not quite it, so I will just have to cheat.] Nap.

Momming Around, X

There are nights…

Aside | Posted on by Beth Hull

There are nights that sleep descends on me
like a blanket coming down
and I stay in sleep so easily,
disturbed by not a sound.

But then there are the nights
with incidents my earplugs cannot mute
potty breaks and whining,
bed territory disputes.

Driftin’, dreamin’, dozin’,
snoozin’, snorin’, nappin’
Sleep never seems so crucial
until it doesn’t happen.

Dear Pre-Mommy Me…

Posted on by Beth Hull

There’s a fun blogsite called Dear Teen Me, where authors write letters to their teen selves. Perhaps there is another site for people writing to themselves before they were parents, but I haven’t come across one yet.

Guess we’ll just have to fill that niche, now, won’t we?

.

Letter to my Pre-Baby Self

Dear Pre-Mommy Me,

Being a parent is hard.

Wait. Stop. Read that first sentence again, because I don’t think you’re actually getting it. Being a parent is HARD.

You still don’t get it. Really, there’s no way you can. Maybe if you did a ride-along with another new mom, sleeping in her bed (or, rather, NOT sleeping), following her into the bathroom for the showers she can’t take in peace, experiencing the excruciating pain that is a poorly-latched breastfeeding session, and then the crazy-making times of being so super-in-love with this baby and also having to remember to keep your cool and NOT SHAKE THE BABY who will NOT stop crying and now you can’t stop crying and why couldn’t you just have been happy with your husband and a cat? Maybe then, you might get it.

You’ll want to scream shut up at every person who tells you, nodding wisely and nostalgically, that “it goes by so fast,” because it doesn’t feel that way when it’s actually going by.

And free time? You’re gonna have to fight for it. Nobody’s going to wave the magic Free Time Wand and hand it to you. Don’t forget to ask. Don’t forget to tell people what you need (because twelve months is an awfully long time to take to learn that lesson).

You will come to depend on your family and friends in ways that are thoroughly humbling and teach you the meanings of grace and compassion. Remember to thank them often [Dear Me-of-the-right now: thank those folks!].

Babies aren’t for everyone, but babe, once you have one, you’ll know there’s no going back, and even if you could, you wouldn’t.

With love, pity, and a surplus of picture books,

In-love-with-my-beautiful-family Me

PS: Your body will never look the same. Do us all a favor and get over it.

———————————————-

Invitation

Annnnnd…because I’m going to have my hands full with a new baby in a few weeks, I’d like to invite other parents and aunties and uncles and friends who would like to share their own letters to themselves before their lives were taken over by kidlets. Your letters can help me out while I’m busy on the babywagon. If you’re interested, send me an email or use the contact page above.

Welcome to my Crib

Posted on by Beth Hull

33 weeks pregnant.

[No image to share. Imagine, if you will, a bloated sea mammal.]

We’ve got the crib.

Yup, that's my storyboard tucked inside. I promise to move it before the baby comes.

Now it just needs a room.

What? The view from here is great! Kitchen in one direction, living room in the other, and BOOM. Books.

Perfect view for a budding bibliophile.

It’s a longer story than that, but I’ll try to make it short because honestly, I need a donut. Homes put the crib together in the living room because our teeny bedroom doesn’t have enough space for putting furniture together. And now the crib won’t fit through the doorway. Even with the door taken off. So here it rests, in the middle of this room-without-a-name (I call it the Third Room, but it is essentially a very wide hallway with books), until we rearrange the bedroom to make space for (re)assembling the crib.

Oh yeah, and the place where we were going to put it in our bedroom? It would give us approximately eleven inches to squeeze between it and our bed in order to reach the bathroom.

I purposefully bought a cheapie small IKEA crib because I didn’t want a freaking monstrosity taking up the nonexistent space in my house! (!!!!!!!!!!) (Yes, those are optional exclamation points. This way you can hear me shouting that sentence, or, if your ears are feeling strong, shrieking it while I grip the lapels of someone responsible and shake them until something changes or I collapse into either a) a coughing fit (yes I have another cold) or b) a set of false contractions.)

Ahem.

I better get me that donut, and fast.

NiFtY Author Talia Vance

Posted on by Beth Hull

Today we have a special guest – debut author Talia Vance. Not only is she a prolific writer (two books coming out within the year, AND one more under contract!), but I also count her as a friend.

BH: Welcome, Talia! You have not one, but TWO books coming out between now and next spring. Can you tell us a little about them?

TV: SILVER is a dark romance based on Celtic mythology.  Brianna Paxton accidentally binds her soul to the one guy it might kill her to love. SPIES & PREJUDICE is about a teenage private investigator, Berry Fields, who sets out to discover the truth behind her mother’s death and ends up questioning everything she thinks she knows about love and the one boy she is determined to hate.

BH: What were some of the joys of writing Silver?

TV: I loved discovering the characters’ secrets as I wrote (and there were some big ones), I loved those moments when they said the exact right line of dialogue, and I especially loved that I finished a book.

BH: We all have favorite minor characters in our own books, those characters we wish could have more page time. Who’s your favorite minor character in Silver?

TV: I am going to cheat here, because there are two characters I wanted to give more time to:  Joe is the conscience of the story, a voice of reason among chaos.  His past is full of violence and loss, but he’s always so calm and stoic.  I know what’s made him the way he is, but I often wonder what it would take to make him break. Someday he may get his own book, just so I can find out.

Portia barely makes an appearance in SILVER, but she definitely has her own story.  In early drafts, she began to take over the second half of the book, and I had to cut out her entire story from the final version.  All that background wasn’t for nothing, however.  She gets quite a bit more page time in GOLD. [note for the audience – GOLD is Book 2.]

BH: Switching from fantasy to contemporary is something I’m doing now with my own work-in-progress. Were there any challenges involved with your switch, and how did you overcome them?

TV:  The biggest challenge was switching from Brianna’s voice, which is more introspective and emotional, to Berry’s voice, which is more brash and confident.  Both stories take place in contemporary Southern California, but their worlds and challenges are very different.  One thing that helped me make the switch was having a separate playlist of songs that fit the mood and tone of each book.  I listen to the playlist while I’m writing and revising, and it helps puts me in the “head” of the character and the story.

BH: What does your workspace look like?

TV: I work on a couch with a laptop.  This picture is a pretty accurate depiction of how I write, complete with the lapdog lying across my legs.

BH: What is your favorite book on the craft of writing?

TV:  I am a fan of James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure.  Plotting is something that I tend to do organically.  Which usually means I have to figure out the structure and plan the plot in revisions.  Plot and Structure is a great book for reminding me what a story should look like in its purest form.

BH: What is the best writing advice anyone has given you?

TV:  Put everything you have on the page.  Don’t save your best stuff for another book.  Put it in this one.  You’ll come up with new stuff later.  Make this book count.

BH: Talia, thanks so much for sharing about your books and writing! I can’t wait to hold the published copies of Silver and Spies & Prejudice in my hands!

For more on Talia, including some brilliant blog posts on writing, you can visit her at the YA Muses blog by clicking here.