Going Into eBook Once Again

THE PASSION OF DELLIE O'BARR became available on Nook today. Odd that it came out on Nook before Kindle, but Kindle should be out before the week's up. I like having my books available again, even if it is an electronic version. I got 1099s from both Barnes and Noble and Amazon for sales of LILY last year. Surprised me. I knew I'd been getting little deposits from them, but it adds up.

Re-reading THE PASSION OF DELLIE O'BARR to catch mistakes made in the conversion process is what got me interested in working on the old screenplay again. I have been doing more of that over the last few days. My son and his partner will be here mid-week next week, and shortly afterwards, we are making our three-month trip to Texas, so the screenplay is something I can take along more easily. But once we get back from Texas, I am going to set it aside and get back to the endless novel. I'm really chomping at the bit to dig back into it.

It is fun to work on this screenplay, although I'm sure I'm going to have to cut easily half of it before I'm finished. I like learning a new way of writing, delving into the mechanics of it, and just finding methods to get the story done through dialogue and action. That just has to be good practice for novel-writing, too. In prose it's often too easy to cop-out with a lot of narrative and internal monologues. Not possible with a screenplay, or anyway, not AS possible. I am seeing more and more movies with voice-overs than I ever used to see, and for the most part, it's in movies where the script has been adapted from a novel. But I'm not quite good enough at this yet to do that effectively.

Anyway, I think I'm really looking at this screenplay as more of an exercise. I do understand that it's even harder to have a screenplay produced than it is to have a novel published. And I'm not sure I would be willing to put in all the necessary work that would go into that process. I've had some dealings with movie people -- producers, directors, writers, etc -- and they live in a totally different universe than I do. Truth is, I don't want to live in theirs, so there you are.

On another note, I've felt the need to fill my loose time with some money-making endeavors. I've started selling again. Ladies fashion blouses this time. It's a new line of merchandise for me but not a new concept. Selling is basically selling, no matter what the product. Hopefully it will turn out to be lucrative. Otherwise, I'll quit.

Onward ....

Home Again & Back To Work

So we have been in Denver for a week, at my SO's semi-annual market/convention. This was my eighth time to go with him and what happens is you get into the merchandising mindset, sort of caught up in the hoopla that goes on at these things. And having been an outside salesman myself years ago, I'm familiar with all that goes into these markets, how you have to psyche yourself up for them, and how gung-ho you get while you're there. So, in the spirit of the moment, I signed myself up to sell a line of ladies embellished tops for a company, thinking it would or could be some "gravy money," as my son said when I told him. I  might be needing a little of that, who doesn't, in the upcoming years. So, samples are supposed to arrive in the next few days, and then I guess I will be seeing which stores I can sell these things to -- who knows. It might be fun. Might help pay for the new office I would like to build outside the back door someday.

In the meantime, though, I am committed to getting myself back in the writing frame of mind, setting aside a certain time each day to sit at my desk, as I am right now, and putting some words on the screen. I used to say "words on paper" but those days are waning fast. Re-reading THE PASSION OF DELLIE O'BARR for Kindle conversion has given me the itch to get back to working on that screenplay I started last summer, before all the tragedy and interruptions came along to waylay the whole household.

While we were in Denver, I visited one of the Apple Store there, looking into getting a new laptop, finding out what is compatible with this old one and what is not. I have decided to wait until this one just absolutely conks out before spending all that money. This one still serves most of my purposes and the biggest trouble with it seems to be the slow internet connection I have in the mountains, not the computer itself. Inside the Denver hotel, with their "for-real" high-speed internet, this old laptop worked like a youngster instead of it's true 6-year old self. I like the Appleworks word processing program and don't want to have to learn WORD or PAGES or any of the other newer stuff. So me and Bessie will soldier on together. (Hey, I just gave my laptop her name!)

And speaking of writing time -- don't want to spend it all writing this blog.

Onward ....

Notable Books, According to Me

Awoke this morning feeling good about life, about living in a place where the air is sweet and fresh, where you need a jacket to sit outside in July to drink your coffee, where the main sounds are the crows cacking and the tickle of squirrels climbing up the barky pine trees. Yes, this house is small, but it has a beautiful ceiling. It rained yesterday. The roof leaked a little over in the corner by the television. It's the first real rain we've had since we bought the place. I found a flashlight to check for other possible leaks, ran the spotlight up and down the ceiling beams. I found a lot of cobwebs, but no other wet places.

I've seen ceilings before that this one is patterned after -- on old adobe porches primarily. Long beams spaced about three feet apart, with planks adjoining in a perpendicular fashion. The boards on the ceiling here are knotty pine and smooth, with rougher beams that are actually supportive and not just decorative. These beams extend through the exterior wall and out to the edge of the porch overhang. On the porch the beams are painted, but inside they have been left natural to darken with age. Now, that the paneled walls inside have all been painted a light off-white, the beauty of the ceiling really strikes out. And now that I have inspected them with a flashlight, the ceiling has also been de-cobwebbed.

The atmosphere here is really conducive to reading and I have been getting a lot of that done. Don't know why I seem to have no time for reading when I'm at home in Texas. I downloaded some books to my Kindle before we left Texas. Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragnoso is the first one I read. It's about a woman's relationship with a pedophile, and is particularly timely with the Jaycee Dugard story so much in the news right now. It was one of those books that hangs with you, disturbs you and makes you try to rationalize. Also downloaded was Remember Ben Clayton by my friend Stephen Harrigan. Stephen is another writer who hales from Corpus Christi, which is our only real connection. He's a wonderful writer and this novel is his best to date. I'm finding it fresh and factual, particularly since it's dealing with a time period I researched considerably for Right From Wrong, and his characters are lively and real. I'm not completely finished with it, and plan to say more about it later.

One thing I have found with all this reading is how easy to handle and convenient the Kindle is. It doesn't tire my hands out the way a real book does, and mine has a little light attached to the cover, so I can read in the dark, which I have been doing for a while every night before I go to sleep. The one thing that is not handy about the Kindle, though, is that it is easy to lose your place, and you never know what page you're on at any given time. There's a bookmark, but it isn't always easy to get back to the mark if you happen to accidentally hit the paging button a few times. The other thing you miss out on with a Kindle, is photographs that might be inside the actual book.

This is the main reason I bought from Barnes & Noble online, with a birthday gift certificate, a book called River of Traps by William DeBuys & Alex Harris. It's about these two men's years living in the New Mexico mountains in the shadow of the Truchas Peaks, and an old Hispanic man who befriended them. Harris is the photographer and there are some lovely full-page black-and-whites inside, and the descriptions and history of the area are beautifully told by DeBuys. The old man, Jacobo, is wise and witty and so familiar to me of similar men I had friendships with during my years of living and working in San Antonio.

Finally, there's a bookmobile that comes to our village once a month from up at Cimarron, which is about halfway between here and Raton. In June, I got a card and checked out two books, one of which turned out to be a lovely, informative treatment of The Mountains of New Mexico by Robert Julyan. The author has visited each of the mountains he discusses, gives so much information about the geography and how the land was formed, that even though I had originally intended to only peruse it for mountains in our area, I ended up reading the entire book cover to cover, and took it with us when we visited the Capulin Volcano when the boys were here. I'm one of those people who needs to know where I am in the world, in a much more detailed way than just by giving an address or distance from some larger town. I still feel a lot of mystery around me here, and won't quit reading until I think I understand this place, its people, its present and its past.

Meanwhile, it's time to take a shower and get this day started. It's nearly noon and I've done nothing but read, drink my coffee, and listen to the birds in the trees.

Onward ....

Back at the Cabin

Left Denver yesterday morning about 9:15. Took six long hours to finally get back to the cabin. It was snowing up on Elk Mountain, but in the Valley it was 51 degrees. However once the sun goes behind the mountains, it chills down pretty quickly. I kept a fire going until bedtime.

This morning I put together the shelving unit I bought in Denver. I have the office just about done now, and I really feel that I could write here. Unfortunately, we're leaving in a few days so there won't be time to get anything sustained going, but it's good to feel the urge anyway. I might want to come up here by myself some time soon and just SEE if any writing might happen.

Meanwhile, on the Kindle front -- got the proofs from the people doing the conversion. They scan the book, then turn it into a WORD file. From there they format to Kindle, and the other e-readers. Anyway, I really didn't like it that the final WORD doc has a space between each and every paragraph in the book. I was under the impression that the Kindle version would look just like the hardcover pages, and that spacing bothered me. Primarily, as I tried to explain to the man I've been dealing with, because there are quite a few intentional spaces for time transitions within the text and they don't stand out a bit with all this spacing that has been put in with this conversion. I've requested that they take out all the paragraph spacing and he said that they would, although he didn't sound happy about having to do it. I guess I'm just too picky, don't know. But I figure if I'm paying for it, I want it done right.

Speaking of Kindle, I finished reading the first book I downloaded onto mine - A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Eagan. I had read a review of the book in TIME and it sounded intriguing. The novel was written in a weird, non-linear way that I really liked, almost like a jumble of characters thrown into stand-alone short stories, but that all had connecting threads. These kind of innovative books always make me want to write again. I think it's the endless possibilities, the opportunity to try something new, that always tugs at me.

Last night, since I was here alone, I rewatched "Sixth Sense," that old movie with Bruce Willis and Tony Collette. I had seen it before -- who hadn't? -- but since my SO likes it so much, I thought I should give it a second chance. I did like it more this time than I did the first time. But I still didn't think it was worthy of an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Pluuueeese! Must've been an off year.

The cat was very happy to see me. The dog wasn't as happy to see the cat. They had a little altercation, with the cat dominating, of course. I seem to spend all my time when I'm alone with the two of them, trying to make each of them feel they're special. They are, of course, but they're just so damned jealous.

Onward ....

Catching Up With the New Year

What a difference a few weeks and a new year can make. I realized this as I read my last post, oh so long ago, it seems.

We have been at the cabin in New Mexico for three weeks now, and have just got hooked up with internet service. I had bought a device to plug into the USB port on my laptop to pick up broadband through the cell signal, which is strong in our valley. But alas, the cell towers were not compatible and that effort flopped miserably. I got a refund at least. So, now we are back to receiving our internet service through satellite, same as back in Texas. Well, at least it works.

The day we arrived here, the 29th of December, we drove into the driveway at the exact same time as a blizzard was arriving. I was upset by it mostly because we were supposed to have a washer and dryer delivered the next day, and I was afraid that wouldn't happen with the bad weather. But the delivery boys braved the mountain and the snow, which was falling hardest just as they got here. Despite the bad weather, they completed the installation, hauled off the old dead machines, and kept their good sense of humor through it all. The people here are all very accommodating and pleasant, we are finding. Might have something to do with living in such a beautiful place.

However, New Year's Eve was pretty miserable. The wind was howling, snow all over the place. We felt cabin-bound, and both of our tempers flared for a moment. I was cold all that day. We did venture down to the restaurant for supper that night, a trip that should take about 3 minutes took 20 because of the slick, snowy road and strong wind. They said we had gusts up to 60 mph that day. Which sent the chill factor plummeting to minus 20, tough conditions for two old South Texas transplants. Hell, I was 14 years old before I ever saw snow for the first time, and have only experienced it down there three times in my whole life. Anyway, we had a good meal, met some more neighbors, had cocktails, and enjoyed the rest of the night.

Next morning we installed our new 42 inch flat screen TV that we had given each other for Christmas. We even get some of the networks this time, although they come to us out of San Francisco -- an odd thing, and we have to keep remembering about the time difference. Jay Leno doesn't come on until 11:30, much to the SO's chagrin. That evening, I made a big meal of ham and black-eyed peas, and we drank the champagne that we hadn't been in the mood for the night before. Tasted good. The wind had quit howling. Our moods had improved. We also discovered the blower on the fireplace, which helps greatly to keep this cabin warm. It's a constant job, tending that fire though. You have to add logs at least two times per hour, and poke them around in between additions. My SO seems not to tire of it, thank god. And we have a good fireplace here, unlike the one in Texas which smokes and doesn't draw properly.

A few days later, the SO's granddaughter and her boyfriend arrived -- our first house guests. They came to ski, and it kept them busy for most of the five days that they were here. One day, we did take them sightseeing around this part of the Sangre de Cristos. We took lots of pictures and enjoyed the day. The place got quiet again after they left.

We've had another snow and more cold weather since then. Was 3 degrees  yesterday morning when we awoke. But somehow, we've acclimated now and it doesn't bother us as much. Or me as much, I should say. I don't think my SO was ever bothered as much as I was, sun bunny that I have always been. It's weird, though, how 20 degrees here feels so much warmer than 20 degrees would feel at home. Humidity can't be the whole of it, because the humidity has been as high as 80 percent here since the first of the year. It just must have to do with the air, that's all I can think of to explain it. The air is just cleaner and fresh, thinner, too.

Anyway, my SO left for Denver this morning, and I will join him tomorrow. I'm loathe to leave the cabin, and I really don't care for Denver much, or Colorado for that matter. I'm one of the only people I know who thinks Colorado is highly overrated. Sorry, to any of my Colorado friends who might read this. But seriously, most of you don't mind stating your contempt for Texas, do you? Of course, I do still love my native state, even though I seem to have, oddly, also fallen hard for New Mexico.

So, I will try to do better about writing here in the future. I have things to share that I haven't touched on this time -- mostly about my Christmas Kindle and how it has inspired me to do certain things. But for now --

Onward ....