First, a few announcements:

I'll be in New York this Saturday, May 19, doing a YA panel at Books of Wonder with Robin Wasserman, Brian James, Daniel Nayeri, Stacy Kramer, Valerie Thomas, and Hannah Barnaby. (noon - 2 PM)

On Saturday, I'll be signing at the Jenkintown, PA Barnes & Noble from noon - 2 PM, along with Elisa Ludwig and Alissa Grosso.

I was honored to see Try Not to Breathe on the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults nomination list. There are some awesome books on the list so far, and yes, it is a delight just to be nominated.

P.J. Hoover, author of Solstice and The Emerald Tablet, interviewed me as part of a series on the Alumni of the 2k classes (I was part of the Class of 2k10). Along with talk about how to survive the debut author experience, there's also a gratuitous Cute Cat Photo involved!

And now, for writerly thoughts: I may have mentioned that I've been reading the letters of Jack Kerouac. I've gotten to the point where, IMHO, he finds his voice. Inspired by a long autobiographical letter from Neal Cassady, he begins writing long autobiographical letters of his own (addressed back to Cassady). He writes these letters with a rhythm and flow, a vulnerability and lack of self-consciousness, that set them apart from his earlier work. Shortly after penning (or typing) these letters, he sat down for the marathon rewrite session that produced the famous scroll* of On the Road.

Most writers don't find their voices so suddenly and dramatically (and, to tell the truth, this may only have been the spark that lit the piles of fuel that Kerouac had painstakingly gathered, the hours he had put in on reading and writing before this "sudden inspiration"). Most writers don't have someone serve as their muse quite as concretely as Cassady did for Kerouac.* But it's exciting to witness a writer's breakthrough. We never know when it's going to happen or what's going to trigger it. We plug away at our craft, and then--sometimes--we manage to shift to another level.


*If you don't already know this story: Kerouac fastened sheets of paper together to form one long scroll, so that he would not have to interrupt his writing by taking pages out of the typewriter and putting in new ones. Methinks he would've loved computers, for the ability to type without interruption.

*I believe Cassady also served as a muse for Allen Ginsberg, and probably other Beat writers as well.

This week has been a delightful one. First of all, my new Metloef bodhran (Irish drum) arrived in the mail on Monday, and I'm so looking forward to recording with it.





Secondly, the Old House of Stiefvater is getting pretty empty, and the New House of Stiefvater, two hours away is getting pretty empty (as is evidenced by the above video). Our move in date of the 31st, right before I head off to BEA, is looking actually plausible.



Thirdly, I have those two Virginia events (Fredericksburg and Alexandria) with John Corey Whaley tomorrow and the next day, and I adore Corey, and not just because I love his book and he looks like Samwise.



Fourthly, I am working on the sequel to THE RAVEN BOYS and it is going well, so everything in the world is rosy that can possibly be better by being rosy, and all things that are bad when rosy are not rosy at all. 



Anyway, all this delightfulness and rosiness reminded me that I haven't addressed reader questions in awhile, and there was one question that multiple readers asked in multiple ways, both in my blog and at last night's chat. Here it is:



Is your office in your home? If you are alone in a very quiet house all day with no children or husband underfoot, how do you get yourself going each day and stay motivated to write without dropping everything and putting in a load of wash? These are the kinds of things I wonder about my favorite authors... 




I have a question! Though I don't want to infringe on your privacy, so if you'd rather ignore it I totally understand. I'm just wondering how you balance young kiddos and writing - do they get to go on tour with you? :)




I do indeed have children, Thing 1 and Thing 2. They predate my writing career by a very little bit, but not my art career, which had a lot of the same demands. Namely, that my office was in the house, there was a lot of travel, my hours were theoretically amorphous and flexible. I had the Stiefvater Things pretty early in life, so I basically have always had both children and a career.



Here's something that I should put right out front: both of those things are very important to me. I'm not going to do percentages or a pie chart, but I should tell you that I always knew I wanted a creative career and that having children was going to complement that dream, not crash it. I firmly believe that if you don't believe the same thing — that you are entitled to a career same as any other human of any other gender — you will not accidentally fall into an agreeable parent-career balance. 



 Now that that's out of the way, the practical nitty-gritties. Part of this question is really about time-management. I've blogged about this before. In some respects, kids, laundry, day jobs, cat litter boxes, lawn mowing, college courses, and freelance fighter pilot lessons are all the same: they are all demands on your time. And so it just comes down to prioritizing and being clever and honest about the time you really do have.



Next, the womb warts themselves: Things 1 and 2 have known for a very long time that my writing and art are important career things for me, and so they respect quiet time when I'm on deadline and they're home from school. And before they knew about careers and paying the rent, they had an established "quiet time" — at first they had a nap from 12-2 every day, and then, when they no longer napped, they knew they had to watch a movie in their room with the door closed or play quietly with the door closed or devise evil plans that will eventually come back to bite me with the door closed.



Next, next, Lover: My husband has always been supportive of my career, because he knew I took it seriously. If your Lover doesn't feel the same way, I highly suggest you get an upgrade.



Next, next, next: Last year, I was away from home more than I was home and I wrote two novels. Lover quit his job to help with the kids, and I brought all of them or some of them along when I could. But it's important to point out that before that, I was writing and touring and Lover was working full time himself, and we still pulled it off. We have a good parental network within an hour's drive, so that definitely helped, and we also were equally committed to each person getting down what they needed to get done. We wanted it to work. So we made it work. There is a way, I promise. I wrote Lament on Wednesdays only, from 4-6 p.m., because I was working such long hours with my art show stuff. It took me four months. It can be done, I PROMISE.



Next, next, next, last: Women. There is a lot of guilt associated with taking time for your career versus spending time nurturing children. Every time you leave the house and the kids have a babysitter or a substandard dinner or no bedtime story, our culture screams at us for being bad mothers. But guess what. Working mothers are not bad mothers. Women who have a sense of self-identity, either through a career or through a home-based activity, are women that kids respect. My father was on an air craft carrier for six months out of the year when I was a kid. I adored him and still do, and what's more — I'm pretty much just like him. So it's not the amount of time you spend sitting in the presence of your kids. It's how you use that time.



So: Prioritize. Educate those close to you. Surround yourself with like-minded people. And kick some ass.

The first volume of Shadow Unit is now available as a proper paper book with a gorgeous Kyle Cassidy cover.

It will be available through Amazon within a week, and will slowly filter its way through the rest of the online distribution system.

This volume contains the first half of Season 1. Volume 2 should be available in about a month, with other volumes to follow.

And of course, Shadow Unit in its entirety is available for free online, and as a modestly priced ebook through the usual sources.

The story began in 2007, and will end in 2013. It's not too late to discover one of the coolest collaborative serials in the genre internets!

*ahem*

Has anyone out there been waiting for Shadow Unit in physical paper-type form?

You have?

Oh. Okay, then. That's good.

Because the first volume is here.

*exits, grinning*

(This volume is the first half of Season One. It'll be available on Amazon.com within a week, and elsewhere within two months. Season One, volume two will be available within the month; I'll let you know.)

Over the last few days, I've learned a valuable lesson about whiteness. As in "what shade of white is this damn trim?" and "who the ever-living hell knew there were this many KINDS of white?"

See, for some reason the window frame/sill in my office is left partly unpainted. No idea why. Didn't notice it on the house's walkthroughs, but once I'd seen it, I couldn't un-see it - and anyway, there were a number of places in the molding and trim that really needed a good once-over. Most of the problem areas occurred in the wake of some distant electrical updates, and the more recent smear mistakes some clumsy moron amateur* made while painting over an Unfortunate Yellow room with a Pretty And Sensible Lavender/Gray.

Since our home is an older house, and the previous owners were all about doing "period appropriate" stuff, I went to Lowes and found an "antique white" that was allegedly certified in some ridiculous fashion as being historically valid (no doubt some kind of marketing scam, I know) ... and it looked about right. I mean, it's white, right?

Ha.

Got the paint home and it was, in fact, not nearly the right white. So I fussed and fumed, and wandered up to the attic to stash my now-useless quart of not-the-right-white paint, and I discovered a row of old paint cans. Hooray! These must be the colors used in my house! Thank you, previous sellers!

Of course, all these paint cans were dry as a bone, but that was okay. They had the formulas on the top - and when I found what MUST be the right white for pity's sake, I copied down all the info on the top label. Yes, all of it - all the little numbers that made no sense whatsoever to me, but clearly indicated a color formula to a better-educated eye than mine.

Then I went to Ace, because it's much closer than Lowes. I asked the nice (actually, rather amusingly cranky) lady at the paint counter if she could help me.

She said, "Nope. That's a proprietary brand and formula for Home Depot. You'll have to take it to them - unless you can get us a paint chip about the size of a quarter, in which case we can color-match it, but we might not be able to match the texture, depending."

So I went out to Home Depot, figuring this would be a slam dunk. I had the paint's brand. I had its weird number formula-thingy details. I had a debit card and a willingness to fork it over.

Ha again.

When I got there, the paint woman was being badgered by an older lady who couldn't be compelled to understand that she could not merely describe a color she totally saw this one time and expect the paint woman to pull it out of her ass. This conversation went on for probably fifteen minutes, during which I did verily salute the paint woman for her continued patience, because if it'd been me, I'd have grabbed a rifle and climbed a tower.

But finally the old lady wandered off in a dissatisfied fashion, having learned nothing except that the paint woman wasn't a wizard, and behold: It was my turn. Smugly, I thought that I would be an easy customer. A pleasant chaser to a difficult situation.

Eh.

The paint woman agreed that I had copied all the appropriate information required for her to recreate the paint in question, except that (a). they no longer made that precise type of paint with its attendant qualities, and (b). the paint can from which I'd copied this intel had apparently been whipped up during the last ice age - for it was so dreadfully old that the entire system was now on a different set of formulas.

But thank God for paint woman, who (it turned out) actually was kind of a wizard. She jiggered the formulas around, found me a comparable paint, and then sought about shaking me up a can of The Correct White.

At which point the machine locked up, and had to be rebooted/restored/reprogrammed with help from some specialist from some other end of the store.

Long story short, it took over an hour for me to get my gallon of paint - which I now cherish with an unreasonable fondness, because get this: It's The Correct White.

Or if it isn't, bugger all if I can tell the difference.

Since I was on now a roll ... back up into the attic I went, hoping to find matches to the rest of the spots in the house which required touching up - namely, the kitchen and The Nice Bathroom.** Nope. Just dried up gallons of Unfortunate Yellow and a rusted-out pail of whatever someone had used in the living area.

But encouraged by my hard-won success with the Correct White, I went back to Ace (they're close, remember?) with a peeled strip of bathroom paint.

(Why was the bathroom paint peeling? Suffice it to say there was an incident involving a clumsy moron amateur,*** a mirror, some double-sided sticky tape, a cast iron tub on which one should not balance whilst wearing socks nor at any other time, and the house's previous owners who apparently didn't prime before using glossy latex in a bathroom. Ahem.)

The adorably cranky paint woman at the Ace counter performed some magic, and gave me a quart of paint. Ladies and gentlemen and the otherwise affiliated: IT WAS PERFECT. I did a little dance, right there in the bathroom. (But not on the edge of the cast iron tub. In socks. Fool me once, etc. etc. etc.)

And then I turned right around and went hunting for a place from which to swipe a paint chip in the kitchen, which is a pleasant shade of green - yet featured an unpleasant, unpainted set of plastered-over bits left over from some electrical work. Eventually, back behind the washing machine (laundry nook = same color) I found some painted-over tape buckling up. EXCELLENT.

I snipped the tape, ran to Ace, and was home again in twenty minutes with a quart of Precisely The Right Green. Or, again - if it isn't Precisely The Right Green it's The Green Which Is So Freaking Close That Cherie Isn't Running Back To Ace Anytime Soon Because She Sure As Shit Can't Tell The Difference.

And anyway, that's what I've been up to. Driving all over town trying to Do It Right, and eventually getting it About 99% Right Which Is Probably The Best I'm Going To Do And I'm Okay With That.

If you're curious about how the office turned out, well, that probably means you don't follow me on my Twitter feed - where I've posted about it already. But that's okay. Here's what the room looked like in progress, half lavender/gray and half Unfortunate Yellow.

And here's what it looks like now - two views: one, and two. (Yes, I have a daybed in there. I have back problems, and prefer to work with my legs/feet propped up - and with a lot of lumbar support. So I improvised.)

Anyway. That's all there is to tell about my painting adventures (for now), except that I am very lucky the previous owners used the same semi-glossy white on just about everything they wanted white. So there's that. And now I have the correct and modern formula, so if I run out, I can ask the nice Home Depot paint woman to wizard me up some more.

And now I'm going to see about making myself some supper. In my kitchen that still smells very, very faintly of paint.

---

* Me.
** As opposed to the other one. See previous post.
*** Me again.

There are, however, things that make life easier to endure while one's immune system is fighting the battle of Helm's Deep against the snot-orcs and the congestion cave trolls and the giant sore-throat spiders. (No, Bear, these are not good spiders. They are icky metaphorical spiders, and I am allowed to kill them if I want to.)

For two days I've flung zinc tablets and decongestants at the problem. They've helped, but they haven't really made me feel better. At last, today, I have something that makes me feel as if I wouldn't rather die than have this cold.

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon honey
8 - 10 ounces of hot, but not boiling, water
1 shot whisky (Jameson's would probably be perfect. I have Highland Park single malt 12yo, which is probably pearls before cold-swine, but I don't care)

Combine the above in a mug. Drink. Repeat as necessary.

No, you won't be cured. But you won't care.

Hrm. I seem to have mis-typed the date on my prior entry. Should be the 10th, not 20th; I’m not typing to you from the future, at least not yet.

So, “Hell or High Water,” my first fictional foray into Golarion, setting for the Pathfinder RPG, is now complete. Clicking here will take you to a page with all four parts. Had a real blast writing this, and I’m pretty sure this isn’t the last time you’ll see me visiting this particular setting or property.

Speaking of settings and properties, I’ve just begun yet another tie-in novel, for a property that I cannot yet reveal. I think most of you will get a kick out of it, but if you’re not a tie-in fan, don’t worry. The fact that I happen to be doing a number of tie-in projects in a row should in no way be taken to mean that I’m stepping away from my original stuff. Got a lot of stuff brewing there, too.

If you’re in or near Austin, don’t forget that next Wednesday (the 23rd), Keith Baker and I will be doing a joint signing at Dragon’s Lair. Starts around 6:00 PM; hope to see some of you there.

Originally published at Mouseferatu: Rodent of the Dark. You can comment here or there.

http://carriev.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/current-research/

http://carriev.wordpress.com/?p=4050

So, without giving too much away, I’m writing something that takes place in an old mine.  Since I live in Colorado, where the early economy was based on stuff dug out of old mines, I decided to take a couple of tours to see what they’re really like.  Last week, I was in Cripple Creek, at the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine, which is cool for a number of reasons, one of which being it was first claimed and owned by a woman, Mollie Kathleen Gortner, which wasn’t often done in those days.  The tour is worthwhile, if you ever find yourself in that area.  From a research standpoint, it was incredibly useful, because I discovered my own mental pictures of gold and silver mines comes straight out of Hollywood and Indiana Jones movies, and isn’t entirely accurate.  As is usually the case, a lot of what I learned won’t go into the story, but having a really good mental image of what the place looks like, what methods were used to tunnel, and what gets left behind will help the story immensely.  And I took pictures.

The old sorting house.  Cripple Creek is at 9,000 ft altitude, and it was a chilly, foggy day.

This is looking up into a vertical shaft, from which the gold was actually removed (horizontal tunnels were for transport and access).

Copper and iron precipitate on the tunnel wall.  The mine’s been out of use long enough, stalactites and stalagmites, thin as wires, are starting to form in some places.  Weird and beautiful.

I am sharing this because I think it's important, and because I think Maria breaks it down better than I could, on a wee travel keyboard. And I like the card analogy - I have a card for being raised American white collar middle-class, and I'm always aware that education dealt me an invaluable card that cannot be underestimated (and why I think a well-rounded education is still the best gift we can give the next generation). It's not "discrimination" or "blaming" to ask us to be aware of those benefits and mindful of them.
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Originally posted by marialima at It’s not about winning or losing, it’s how you play the game