Crush your Rejections, See them driven before you...

Today I didn't manage to get to the gym for my usual weight-lifting routine, but instead I did push-ups.   I did manage to get to zumba yesterday. The only cardio I managed to do this week unfortunately. 6 real pushups, rest 60 secs, 6 "girl" pushups, rest,  4 real pushups, rest 60, 4 girl pushups, rest 2 minutes, 4 real pushups.  I'm still going to go to the gym tomorrow and hopefully get my weight/treadmill time in. 

I'm the one in blue.  Photo courtesy of Megan Brett

I do armored combat in the SCA, but I'm about 100 lbs and a foot shorter than 90% of the other combatants (the gentleman I'm fighting in the picture shown right is far more typical of the usual fighter-size), so in order to keep from getting injured, I need to be in *good* shape.

So why do it? There's something very empowering about learning to hit someone with a stick correctly as hard as you can, while knowing that you're not going to hurt them (seriously). I haven't been able to go out and fight since being pregnant / nursing / primary caregiver of the daughter, so I've got 2+ years of rust on the tiny amount of skill I'd managed to accumulate before getting sidelined by my girlybits. I've missed it greatly.

But getting out there is work. I have to suck up my courage every single time I step into the list, and face opponents who are almost always better/bigger than me, and who can/will club me like a baby seal. Going to practice occasionally isn't enough for me to get good. I have to lift weights regularly in order to build enough muscle that I can move my shield defensively and quickly. I have to do cardio in order not to give up my main advantage. (I'm small, and hard to hit in the legal target areas if I'm defending properly. If I run out of wind to keep moving and blocking, I'm dead.) I have to eat properly. I have to do pell work drills.

I am about to get killed here. Photo: Megan Brett

I have to fight daily to maintain a routine so I can get out onto the field and fight.

So, when I read about how crushing authors find rejection, I can't help but think they're looking at it the wrong way.  You're learning to battle, fellow authors. You're new. You're going to suck.  You're going to get clubbed like a baby seal, and you're going to have to get up, and get back in line to go another round.  You know why?  Because eventually, you'll beat your opponent once. And you'll be so pumped from that one small win, that you'll go out another hundred times.  And maybe you'll win a couple more times.  And you go out a thousand times more, and maybe you win less than half the time.  You'll have great days where you'll win 9 out of 10 fights.  And you'll have bad days where you'll get your ass kicked by people who started fighting yesterday.  You'll get bruises that you'll take pictures of and show off to your friends and family so they buy you a beer. You'll swear that you had to be out of your mind to start this crazy thing that takes hours of your life and seems nuts to everyone who you tell about it, and that you're going to quit.  But you're not. 

Because you aren't doing it for everyone else. You can't. You're doing it because you love the game, and because there's nothing better in the world than those few seconds where you soar on clouds of victorious glory.

You have to fight so you can fight. Rejections are just reassurance that you had the courage to get in the game.

Query letters are hard.

Today I've been chewing on my query letter. Much like my daughter (shown below in her bald stage. She has hair now.), I'm reduced to a drooling mess.  

I'm posting it here, and I welcome any comments, because I'm at the point where I can't see what's wrong with it.  Please feel free to shred. 

Fine, I'll chew my way out!

Dear Super Awesome person,

In REMINGTONS KILL PEOPLE, Mercy and Justice Givens, twin sisters and co-owners of the Givens Detective Agency, are having a bad week. Taxes are due in three days, and their bank balance is lower than a rattlesnake’s belly. Their only case, proving ditzy debutante Genevieve Simmons didn’t stab her boyfriend, seems hopeless. Just before they’re forced to borrow money from their Aunt Irene to pay Uncle Sam (again), another case to find an amateur embezzler provides a stay of execution.

Their hopes of a quick fee are crushed when someone parks a forklift on an accounting clerk’s head and dumps the body in the back of their truck, implicating them in murder. The twins ignore the warning, and the next body is hung in the handicap stall, right where Mercy, a paraplegic, is sure to find it. Now they’ve got to find the murderer before Justice is the third casualty of the frantic murder spree.

Worse, they don’t know that the killer isn’t the one who really wants them dead. Genevieve’s been framed, and the framer's hell-bent on making sure Justice and Mercy stay out of the picture. The twins aren’t used to being double-teamed, and Mercy’s genius plus Justice’s thirty-eight may not be enough to survive a Machiavellian murderer pairing up with a panicky killer.  

REMINGTONS KILL PEOPLE was recently selected as a finalist in Janet Reid’s Liz Norris Pay it Forward competition for debut novels, and is approximately 77,000 words in length. It is set in San Antonio, Texas and has the potential to be the first in a series featuring Mercy and Justice Givens. I am a native West Texan who likes to torment her Canadian husband with Tex-Mex cooking, lament my neglected concert pianist career, and recreate medieval illuminated book-pages in pre-1600 styles, when I’m not engaging in armored combat or changing diapers. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Kind regards

Britni Patterson

Domestic As-SALT. Ah-ha-ha-ha.

So the baby was screaming in the car on the way home, having hit her personal time limit for being out on the town.

I put on the local 80's / 90's rock station instead of the club/dance music station that usually lives on that radio, and she goes right to sleep.

I tell my 80's rock-loving, guitar-playing husband who was in an 80's cover band for 2 years about this, and his response?

"Clearly the child has managed to develop better musical taste in 10 months than you have in 30-plus years."  (Which is unfair, as I love me some hair metal.)

I was cooking at the time of this conversation, so I threw some salt at him.

"Take that!"

"What?"

"I just assaulted you."

He stared at me for a moment. "Oh. Ah ha. And this is the mind of a mystery writer?"

"It's also the mind you go to sleep next to every night. I'd think that'd be scarier."

He conceded the point, and took the daughter down into the man-cave, I assume, to have a talk about respecting the brilliance of her mother.

Finally!!!

FINALLY I can tell everyone!  I'm a finalist! My novel was good enough to be a finalist!

http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2012/04/finalist-8.html

Imagine if you will, a quiet family tableau.  Gramma is visiting and is happily watching Dancing with the Stars, while drinking Busch Light.  Two Chihuahuas are sleeping in the dog bed.  Daddy is sitting on the couch watching Dancing with the Stars because Gramma is his mother, and he has no choice.  BabyGirl is sitting on Mommy's lap, while Mommy tries to check her email and hold a baby until it's bath time.

Then all of a sudden, Mom flings the baby at Daddy, and proceeds to leap up and go jumping around the house, screeching and whooping, and yelling things like "I don't suck!" and "YEE-HA!"  Because Mommy is from Texas, and that's what happens.

Luckily, Daddy catches the baby, but the chihuahuas are startled awake and start barking.  The cats, who were asleep until Mommy went berserk and the dogs started barking, start racing around the house to fight over the best hiding spot until the Apocalypse is over.  The dogs, assuming the cats know something, start chasing the cats.  The cats run faster because they are now being chased.

Gramma spills her beer, and starts yelling about the waste of beer.

Daddy uses the baby to mop up the beer, and is yelling at Mommy to please explain what the hell is wrong with her brain and is she having a reverse stroke?

Mommy eventually manages to find enough words to explain that she's a finalist in the debut novelist competition she spent two weeks killing herself to enter. 

... Daddy says I'm exaggerating a bit, but it was TOTALLY like that.

Today is officially declared "I Don't Suck!" day.  Have some carrot cake and tea.

Procrastination is Productive

So far, I've made breakfast sandwiches (scrambled eggs with MAE farms sausage on leftover hamburger buns, sprinkled with the Sargento Mexican blend cheese), homemade carrot cake with cream-cheese icing, and Italian wedding soup is simmering on the stove.

I've also made a hell of a mess out of the kitchen that my darling husband cleaned this morning, but he doesn't mind because of the soup.  It's his favorite dish, and I swear it's one of the easiest to make.

Sausage, sauteed garlic, veggie and chicken broth, baby spinach, tarragon, nutmeg, lemon pepper, and sage if the sausage doesn't have it already in it.  Let the soup simmer deliciously until boiling, then add tortellini of whatever variety makes you happy.  Sprinkle with parmesan and serve.

I also did a massive shopping trip to restock the fridge.

I've also managed to procrastinate off most of the day instead of working on the e-pub format for my monograph for pre-seventeenth century pigments, hopefully titled "The Illuminator's Palette."  I'd initially submitted it for publication to the Compleat Anachronist, which is the academic publication of the Society for Creative Anachronism, but there've been "issues".  (One editor passed away suddenly, the other one didn't respond to five emails over 8 months from me.) 

But now I have something else to procrastinate - I.E. cleaning the kitchen, so I can now go happily work on my monograph.  I swear most of my major accomplishments are the direct result of avoiding accomplishing something else.

Free SIGNED copy of a book!

If you're interested in a signed copy of UNRAVELING by Liz Norris see the link below


http://liznorris.blogspot.com/2012/04/april-giveaway.html

Liz Norris is on my definitely-to-buy list, not just because she's getting fantastic reviews from EVERYWHERE, but because she's a super-generous author.  Not only does she have the book giveaway, but she's the cause of the Liz Norris Pay it Forward contest that helped me get my novel finished.  (A fantastic contest by the way.  The winner gets an all-expenses paid trip to the Backspace convention in NYC, and to eat lunch with Janet Reid, literary agent of internets fame!)  Utterly brilliant idea.

Freedom!

Mother-in-law season is over! There are no more chihuahuas defiling any carpeted surface in the house! 

There is no more crappy beer in my fridge!  (She likes Busch Light)

 Peanut butter may now be eaten with impunity! (The very idea of peanut butter makes her twitch. A knife dipped in peanut butter sitting in the sink makes her shriek like she saw a giant cockroach.)

In fact, I just had two peanut butter sandwiches, and a cappuccino.

I found an espresso machine at a garage sale for $2 last week. I figured there was something wrong with it, (and there was - it's missing a $8 filter widget that sits at the bottom of the brewing cup), but I love espresso so much I was willing to try it out.

I jerry-rigged around the missing filter widget by cutting down a paper filter, and hand-packing the espresso powder.  So now I have cappuccinos. (It's not quite good enough espresso to be by itself. It doesn't do the light brown color on top of the espresso after brewing like it should.)

But Mother-in-Law season is over!!  ...  For now.