The Iowa grocery store chain known as Hy-Vee never closes. It is open at Easter, open on New Year's Day, open even on Thanksgiving. In the middle of your turkey dinner and realize you forgot the cranberries? Send someone out to Hy-Vee. Middle of the night and you need cough syrup? Hy-Vee. They are open all the time, a constant security blanket of Stuff, some you need and some it's just nice to know is there.

Except for today, and tomorrow.

Hy-Vee will close today sometime in the afternoon or evening. It will stay closed until Saturday morning. This is Christmas Eve, and tomorrow is Christmas Day, and employees want (and deserve!) to be with their families. I'm not against this at all, and in fact, I'm all for it. It's good, really.

It's just... I MIGHT NEED STUFF. AND THEY WON'T BE OPEN!!!

And so begins my annual freakout about food, groceries, and other sundry stuff. It does not help that this year all is chaos, and I am not organized, and there may or may not be a snowstorm, and my sister may or may not make it up here today, and people may or may not make it up here tomorrow night. I need my security blanket of the grocery store that is always willing to trade money for stuff now more than ever, and I'm not going to have it.

AAAAAAAHHHH!

Add to this that Dan just gave me the checkbook total, and buying milk would be tough. Apparently we bought gas and went to the chiropractor and bought groceries once or twice or three times already. Huh. So maybe it's good the stores are closed.

I think—no, I know—that this is actually not about food or Hy-Vee, and it isn't any year. It's about my need to try and prepare for every and any eventuality, to be able to face the onslaught of life with the calm serenity that comes from being prepared. I am always the one on every trip who will have packed every medicine you might need, the one who thought to bring the article of clothing nobody else considered, the one who always, in short, has everything. No surprises, no gotchas.

This year I am a particular fail on many fronts of preparedness, and this year I really do need to double check and make sure I don't need anything at the store, because I could easily have overlooked something vital. Like cat food. We have enough until Saturday if they skimp. I'm not sure about milk. Dan wanted some soda... Yeah.

My grocery store panic always comes out of my unwillingness to accept the loss of a support system in my scheme to maintain control. This year it's more like the temporary closure of an artery. It's in these closures, these changes where the magic happens, where the creativity thrives. I know this. I just don't like it. And really, I approach this the same way when I write. Yes, the good stuff comes out when the story throws a curveball at me, when my nice and tidy plans get chucked out the window and I have to invent on the spot. Yes, that's true. It's just also true that I'm going to whine.

Merry Christmas Eve. May your grocery stores be open, and failing that, may your cupboards and refrigerators be full, and may all your surprises be good ones.

Dreamspinner has a policy that I can purchase books from them at 40% of the listing price and then do pretty much whatever I want with them, including reselling them to the general public. I don’t get royalties for any of these books, but I do get to keep any profit I make.

Some of these books are going to libraries and people who won them through a Twitter promo and in one case by completing NaNoWriMo against superhuman odds, including someone pouring coffee into his brand new MacBook Pro. But there are still a darn lot of them left here, and if you all clean me out of my copies, I will simply order more.

If you want a copy of Hero from me, here’s what you do.

1. Email me using this link (also known as heidi.cullinan@mac.com)
2.  If you are local, tell me how and where and when you’d like to pick it up, or in town, possibly even delivered next time I’m out and about. Local people can give me cash or check. “Local” is anyone I can meet in the Ames or Des Moines area, or also anyone who knows me personally. And yes, this includes knowing me through the CIA Authors.
3. If you are not local, you need to pay me with Paypal. What I’m avoiding here is giving out my real life address to random people on the internet, so if you and I exchange Chirstmas cards or have had more than the casual exchange on my blog or twitter, I’m fine with giving you my address and taking your check. Other than that, Paypal it is. I’ll get you the Paypal information once you email me.
4. Non-mail price is $15; mail delivery price is $20. I’ll be sending it Priority Mail within one working day of receipt of your money, so I’m faster than UPS ground. I don’t think I’m cheaper than Amazon, but nobody can compete with those guys.
5. Yes, I will be happy to sign books that I send out.
6. Yes, you can buy as many books as I have on hand.

My plan is to do this with every book, so if in the future you know you want to order a book and want very much to order from me, you can tell me so as soon as the book is available or as soon as I start the promotional whoring. The price of each book will vary, possibly going up to as much as $20 plus the $5 shipping again. I’ll post a note like this as soon as I know the information, and you can place orders with me as soon as I know how much to ask for. Bear in mind there will always be a delay; I won’t get the books myself until 7-10 days until after the release date, and then I will have to ship them in turn to you. But if this makes it easier for you and/or the signature is important, then we’re fine. I’ll continue to do this until it becomes so unwieldy I can’t manage it, but I think that this scenario is unlikely for quite some time at the very least.

Any questions, comment here or email me.

A blog I read has been calling on authors to give their five favorite books, and after a week of watching, I've decided I want to play, too. So here are my five favorite books, in order. I encourage anybody reading this to post five favorites of their own, be they books or TV shows or movies or albums or what have you. I'd love it if you linked back here, too, so I could go and snoop.




1. American Gods by Neil Gaiman An amazon.com review of this book describes it as "a scary, strange, and hallucinogenic road-trip story wrapped around a deep examination of the American spirit." That's about right. I would love it for the meeting at the House on the Rock alone, but what gets me most about this book is the way folklore and myth and spirituality and belief and the best distillation of "American" I've ever seen are delivered in what, if you don't really want to pay close attention, is also just a plain old good story. It is deep without being pretentious. And it's Neil Gaiman. This is the book where I fell in love with him as a storyteller, and it absolutely changed my life, both as a reader and as a writer.


2.  Tom Jones by Henry Fielding  

 

I actually haven't reread Tom Jones in several years, but even if I never picked it up again, it would still have to be on my list of top books, because it is THE novel that influenced me first. It's a classic, but in its day it was controversial as all hell, and as my undergraduate British Novel course is testament, one can still argue over the moral lessons presented within it today. Tom Jones is baudy, racy, well-paced, full of action and adventure and quirky narrative, and wit. It taught me how to structure a many-layered story more than any course or book ever did, all without even trying. It also taught me what a hero should look like in a novel, and without question, he is one of the most major influences in many of mine, particularly Charles of the Etsey series.


3. A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold I love the entire Miles series, and I was tempted to name Memory or Mirror Dance as a favorite, but really, this is the book that hooked me into the series, and it's the book that despite my having read it four or five times now always has me turning the pages in anticipation of getting to the end each and every time. What is this book about? In short, it's Jane Austen in space. But it's also a crown jewel of a brilliant series full of characters so intense and real you swear you know them personally. It's one of the best rides in fiction in terms of plot and emotion. It has Emperor Gregor, it has court intrigue—it has it all.



4.  A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett Essentially you could insert the entire Pratchett multiverse into this slot, and really, it's hard to choose when you have Guards! Guards! and Hogfather and Thud! and Going Postal and so many others all lying there as perfectly acceptable alternatives. I chose this one because I fell in love with Tiffany Aching, the heroine of this story and two others by Pratchett, and it's in this book that I feel she truly shines. This book wraps up so much of what I love about Pratchett and also includes many of my favorite characters. I look forward to Anna being a little bit older so I can introduce her too this book, too.


5.  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon I am not a fan of all of Michael Chabon's works; in fact, this is the only one I feel I need to own and reread. But this book to me is priceless. I love it as a story of men, as a story of America, and as a story of war. I love it as a story of struggle and of loss and of hope. I love it as a story of identity and perseverance, and I love it because it is about comic books. I love so many, many things about this story, but most of all I love the ending, which Dan swears ends sadly and I swear ends happily. What a coup: a book so strong that even its resolution can be read in completely different ways.  These are my five favorites. I look forward to seeing yours.

Thanks to everyone who helped me tweak the draft of the official blurb for Special Delivery, online and off. Here's the final version:

As my Gramma became older, and her back considerably less forgiving, she would ask me to do things to help her. “Caryle, could you please pick that up for me?” “Caryle, would you please carry that downstairs?” And most of the time, I was glad to do it. Even when answering her voice meant jarring my mind and nose reluctantly away from whatever make-believe world the latest novel I’d purchased had carried me to, the person I am at my core was glad to help. And when Gramma could no longer reach her feet well enough to cut her toe nails, I kissed her on top of her head, told her I was doing this because I loved her, grabbed the nail clippers from her hand and proceeded to trim those suckers down to a manageable length. And really, I was glad I could help her with this little indignity in a small way. Now when I cut my toe nails, I think of her and that I’m thankful I can still reach mine.

**
( Cut for the long winded )

We have officially reached the part of December where I long for January. I love seeing everyone at Christmas, I love making cookies, love, love, love wrapping presents, love the magic and the season and all that jazz, but no matter how I attempt to orchestrate this damn month, every year it leaves me tied up and wasted in the corner by the time it's over. I am always running out of time. Today I'm looking at my to-do list and looking ahead to the next few weeks and I have absolutely no idea how this is all going to happen. So far I have been trusting in serendipity, and so far that has worked, but I feel like I'm doing the tango in the head of a pin. Any second, I'm going to slide off into the abyss.

I'd be okay if I weren't trying to write, but as far as my mental mindset is concerned, this is the same as someone else doing Christmas prep saying, "I'd be okay without my day job." In years past my saying so was just a fancy, a way of playing at making writing real; it was perhaps even more important then, but right now there is a hard reality to that determination. I want Miles and the Dragon stories out the door. I want them drafted, I want them read, I want them submitted to DSP so they are someone else's problem. I like the idea of ending 2009 with all these projects off my desk so that I can start 2010 with the agenda of getting Etsey back in the game and of putting the STB manuscript into shape, because it's the next one going to Dreamspinner after Miles and the dragon short story. Etsey needs an outside home, I'm pretty sure, but that's an assessment I have yet to fully make, and something else to sit and meditate about. But this is all the more reason why I want the 2009 projects ended and done. And the only way this happens is with work.

To be honest, it's very good discipline. There is not time for hand-wringing and carrying on and worrying about whether or not the scene works. There is only time to make it work. Perfect isn't even an option. Functionality is. If later I look at this and think I could do better, well, that will be an interesting mental exercise, and this is all it will be. Or if I work them up and they're turned down? Fine. That's something also to deal with in 2010. None of this matters right now. Right now I am working, I am doing my best, and I am getting it off my desk.

Two projects at once is not my favorite way to go, but there's a rightness about doing so when I'm working in December. Nothing about this month is ideal. You cram way too much into way too little time and nearly kill yourself with the effort. So to balance that I'm working on dual projects, going a bit too fast and being a bit too regimented with them. What I can do is dance my zen as much as I can as I move between them, enjoying the one I am with while I am with it, then putting it firmly aside as I switch laundry, do some dishes, or stop to make cookies with Anna. In the end I think there's more opportunity in this chaos to enjoy the nows; if we can let go of the other things that surround them, there is a potency to each one, to baking, to wrapping, to writing, to editing, and even to cleaning. To visits with family, to traveling, to making business decisions. When done right, it's a beautiful, exhilarating dance.

Of course, I'd enjoy this a lot more if my shoulders were not on extreme strike, but I'll just consider this my pound of fruitcake and keep the pain killers on hand.

Back to work.

Starting a new story was just the medicine I needed, and it helps that some of the same archetypes & themes are present there. I made myself shift between the two today, getting just enough of the new one going that I wanted to work more with it and then not letting myself go on until I did more editing. The result is this.

Something about it is still not quite right, and I will be the first to admit it could still change yet again, but it's a good start and I'll take it. It's enough to move me forward into the next scene, which is another bitch. But each one will be less snarly than the one before, and at least for now this scene is a good anchor.

Now it's time for a shower and some Christmas cookies, the latter which will eventually be a blog story in and of itself.