Christmas is over, time for New Year’s Resolutions

Since it’s the holidays, I’m sort of taking this week off from the blog and repeated one that appeared last Saturday at http://makeminemystery.blogspot.com/, where I blog twice a month. Here goes:

I usually do make New Year’s resolutions, but do I ever keep them? Only if I rig it--make a resolution I already know I’ll do. It’s kind of a depressing practice because it so often sets me up for failure. Never again!

I’m starting a new tradition, beginning this year. It was prompted by one of those funny picture thingies on Facebook. Lots of them make me chuckle a little, some make me laugh out loud, some make me shake my head, but this one made me stop and think. Here’s what it said:

**Start 2013 off with an empty jar and fill it with notes about good things that happen. On new years eve (sic), empty it and see what awesome stuff happened that year.

Writers, we can use these for our successes. A publication, a review, a kind word about something we wrote, or interest in our work.

Being prone to depression, I keep things around that I can review when I feel myself starting to crash--funny books and movies usually. I also have an *attagirl* file with accomplishments so I can remind myself that I can do stuff when I set my mind to it. This is kind of an extension of that. It’s a Good Things Jar, a Feel Good Jar. I think I’ll get a big one.

image from clker.com

Travels of Kaye

We’re on the move again next month. My husband and I used to get what we called “itchy feet” every 2 or 3 years and we’d want to move somewhere. For a time, we did. We were both raised in Illinois and got married there, then went to South Carolina. Our next stop was Montana, on to Ohio, up to Minnesota, down to Texas, back up to Michigan, and back to Texas, where we stayed a good long time.

Sometimes I say we’re touring the United States the hard way, by living each place instead of just visiting.

Now we’re moving on to Tennessee. We’ll miss lots about the place where we’ve been the longest, but we’ll be so happy to get out of the heat and drought. We’re trading burnt orange for what hubby calls traffic-cone orange, state-university-wise.

While in Texas, we’ve done a tour of that state, too, living in Dallas, Holliday (Wichita Falls), Taylor (Austin), and Hubbard (Waco). Our last move was in June of 2012 and, being very busy with writing books, and related things, we haven’t finished unpacking. That will save us money on the next move since it doesn’t cost much for the movers to merely carry boxes out that they haven’t packed.

January will be hectic, but we’re looking forward to getting to know a new part of the country.

Public domain illustration by Homer Dodge Martin, engraved by R. Hinshelwood

Source: http://www.panteek.com/PicturesqueAmerica/index.htm

December 12, 2012

12/12/12.

No, it’s not the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar. (Are you sick of hearing about that?) But it’s the last time, ever, we can have a date, written as above, that has all three numbers the same. The end of an era. Unless--we redo the calendar and add a 13th month. That’s not impossible.

(Although I have found some people who think 12/12/12 IS the Mayan predicted date. If you’re reading this, that date is wrong.)

(12/12/1212 was the last time 4 numbers repeated. I wonder if they noticed.)

In fact, there’s more than one movement to institute a 13-month calendar. It would be more logical. Spock would love it. Each month, with that scheme, has 28 days (no more counting on your knuckles, or reciting “Thirty days hath September.” Every month would start of the same day of the week. There sure would be less to keep track of! Provisions would still have to be made to even the calendar up with the actual annual orbit around the sun, except for the purists who want a strict calendar. Eventually, the seasons wouldn’t match up, but that wouldn’t bother them, I guess. So, it’s slightly possible to have a date that’s 13/13/13.

I don’t know of any movements to create a 14-month calendar.

This all illustrates how artificial it is to give values to time. Hours, minutes, weeks, they’re all modern inventions that have nothing to do with how the earth rotates and orbits. Just our ways of measuring the progression.

How do we, as writers, measure our progression? Do we figure how long it takes to write a book? How many years it took to publication? How long our submissions have been out? Of course we do. Do we measure our growth as a writer, also? It’s good to look back on early writings, if we’ve been doing this for awhile, to see if we’ve gotten any better over the artificial time periods that we’ve been at it. How many years of writing does it take to make a good writer? Good question, but I don’t have an answer.

Book Review: WHITE HORSE by Alex Adams

I think this is a good review to post today, in light of the impending end of the world this month. The review was done earlier this year for Suspense Magazine, which has a free issue out this month at http://www.suspensemagazine.com/.

The horror in the pages of this apocalypse book creeps up on you gradually. The action alternates between ‘then and now.’ ‘Then’ is before the disaster and ‘now’ is after, a world where taxes are no longer certain, only death.

Zoe is a cleaning person at Pope Pharmaceuticals, but she’s highly educated. When her love was killed, she sort of gave up on life and is working at a job that gives her time to think and piece herself back together. Until the day a jar appears in her highly secure apartment.

In the Then times, fearing for her own sanity, she reluctantly goes into therapy with the attractive Dr. Rose, later known to her as Nick. She lies about the jar, though, telling him she’s dreaming about it and the terror it instills in her. The terror is true, but it’s no dream. Gradually, the world falls apart, and the Pandora’s Box in her apartment may hold the key for the disfiguring disease ravaging most of the world’s population.

In the Now times, Zoe is desperately trying to make her way to Greece, carrying a letter from Nick. She takes Lisa, a young, blind English woman, with her to get Lisa away from the abuse she’s suffering at the hands of her remaining family, a father and an uncle. Zoe stubbornly clings to what makes her human, compassion and humanity, and refuses to stoop to the level of the feral survivors roaming the world.

It really does look hopeless! The reader is drawn toward the intersection of the two sections through revelation upon revelation (one of them reveals the meaning of the title), that kept me up way too late at night, avidly racing to the thrilling end.

Reviewed by Kaye George, Author of “Choke”, for Suspense Magazine

The Sky Is Falling, The Sky Is Falling!

December 21st is coming! End of the world--according to a civilization that isn’t around to defend itself. Poor Mayans, they’re taking the blame for a lot.

But zombie fans are having a ball. (Type “zombie run” into the Googler and you’ll see what I mean, in case you’ve missed this phenom.) So are apocalypse writers. I’ll make sure you don’t miss this phenom!

Do you recall Isaac Asimov’s eerie, chilling, sci-fi story, NIGHTFALL? He postulated a planet that had so many suns that it was always bathed in light. Every 2000 years, night does occur, but civilizations come and go between those times and, to the present one, no one has ever known night.  I forget if the suns all line up, or how this happens, but I remember the encroaching darkness, spreading over their sunny planet, that strikes terror in their hearts.

Now, imagine an anthology full of “nightfall” stories! It’s called NIGHTFALLS: Notes from the end of the world. A bunch of us writers imagined the end of the world and what would go through a person’s mind if they knew it was the last night, forever.  

There are some awfully good writers in this antho and I’m SO honored to be among them. You can get a copy here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AGCIO8C

(I recommend reading this before December 21st, just in case.)

The list of title and authors is too good not to share:

Acapulcolypse
Thomas Pluck

Some Say the World Will End in Fire
Sidney Anne Harrison

Forward is Where the Croissantwich Is
Chris Rhatigan

Somebody Brave
Kat Laurange

Our Lady
Dale Phillips

Greene Day
Nigel Bird

Isabel
Megan McCord

The Memory Keeper
Sandra Seamans

Bon Appétit
Barb Goffman

Déjà vu
Christopher Grant

It's Not the End of the World
Matthew C. Funk

A Sound as of Trumpets
Berkeley Hunt

Supper Time
Col Bury

Call the Folks
Alex Keir

Blackened
Dellani Oakes

The End of Everything
A.J. Hayes

Last Shift
Steven Luna

Into the Night
Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw

Blackout
Richard Godwin

Amidst Encircling Gloom
Scott J. Laurange

Devotee
G. Wells Taylor

Princess Soda and the Bubblegum Knight
R. C. Barnes

The Last Wave
Kaye George

The Dogs on Main Street Howl
Allan Leverone

The Knitted Gaol-Born Sow Monkey
Peter Mark May

Crossfade
Christian Dabnor

The Tasting
Jesse James Freeman

The Annas
Patricia Abbott

Night Train to Mundo Fine
Jimmy Callaway

chicken picture from dreamstime