Thunder Moon

I had to catch the full Thunder Moon at dawn this morning, since last night, appropriately enough, thunderclouds obscured the moonrise.

Love those thunderclouds. Rain all you like!

Yesterday, Angela James, Executive Editor of Carina Press and savvy social media maven, tweeted this:

@angelajames Angela James

Me to agent: "I'm going to pass on this author. She's had occasion to be very rude to me & others in the past." #pubtip : Be professional

14 Jul via TweetDeck

This is noteworthy because we've all suspected it's possible for this to happen. The publishing community is quite small, often insular, occasionally incestuous (and I mean that in the nicest possible way). Whether at conferences or online, we are in each other's laps much of the time. There are no secrets. When questioned, Angela followed up with:

@angelajames Angela James

To clarify previous #pubtip, I've never met author, but she's been VERY rude to me re: past rejection letters. & to readers online as well.

23 hours ago

and

@angelajames Angela James

@salys I didn't look at her writing this time.I'm not interested in working w/someone who has no respect for anyone else, readers or editors

23 hours ago

and

@angelajames Angela James

@salys if I know up front that's how she acts, and she's already destroyed her online rep, her writing is irrelevant if she won't sell

23 hours ago

and

@angelajames Angela James

@salys also, my stress level is high enough. I don't need to purposely add something to work situation that would make it worse

23 hours ago

This is pretty much what I would have predicted. Angela is at the helm of a digital-first imprint of a major publisher. She knows that online interactions play a huge role in this world. The days - if they ever really existed - of a writer getting to play the diva and curse anyone who crosses them are well and truly over.

It reminds me of the small town thing.

When I moved to Wyoming for grad school, I went from living in Denver and St. Louis, to a town of 26,000 people. Functionally the population is half that if you only count the year-round population. Now, I was an *ahem* aggressive driver. Not rage-driver, but definitely big-city driver. Other cars were never about people to me - they were simply "traffic." Nothing personal.

Imagine my surprise when people called me out for it.

"Hey, you cut me off this morning!"

"Geez, how fast were you going down Grand yesterday afternoon??"

"You tailgated me all the way to Safeway - what's up with that?"

Oops.

Once I got over the fact that these people actually looked in my car and recognized me, I discovered I was now accountable for my driving behavior in a way I'd never been before. No longer anonymous, I had become part of a small community, for better or worse. I had to change my behavior.

I suppose you could argue this impinged on my freedom to be obnoxious. Small towns can be oppressive because they do limit freedom of thought and action. The social mores can be restrictive. But, there's always the option to leave that community. If the reasons to stay are compelling enough, you'd better learn how to get along with your neighbors.

And if you want them to hire you or elect you to city council? Find a way to be congenial.

It can't be said often enough: watch what you say in public. Imagine that everything will be heard and remembered, and absolutely held against you in the court of public opinion. People will forgive you the odd slip, but a pattern of continued bad behavior? No no no. My writing buddies and I have the Cone of Silence. All snarkiness must occur inside the Cone.

Make sure it's really on, too.

What was most amazing to me about yesterday's exchange was an author replied to Angela saying:

Oh, shit, I said I was *sorry* I called you "picky."

and

I'm crying now. You're such a b*#$ch.

I didn't include her tweet info here, because I think she's an idiot for posting those and I'll save her this extra bit of self-induced humiliation. The tweets are still up, though, for anyone who cares to see... and to track that her data matches up to Angela's author-in-question.

Perhaps it all comes down to learning to take criticism. Live and learn.

When you do get called out for something, like I did? It's an opportunity for course-correction. Apologize and fix the problem. People will forgive. They'll eventually forget.

But not if you keep behaving badly.

Missing the Moon

I missed the moon this month.

Back in September, I promised to do a post each month on the full moon. I've hit them all until this month. I don't really know what happened. The Planter's Moon rose on schedule Sunday night. At first I was too early to catch it, then I was too late. I tried to photograph it setting in the morning, but the light was wrong. Here's one of the landscape shots I took while trying to capture the faint moon at dawn.

Some months it's just not meant to be.

I can say that it's been ferociously windy lately and so I haven't been lingering outside. It's a good thing we haven't been planting, because the 40- and 50-mile per hour gusts would have ripped the seeds from our hands. Springtime here is windy. I think of it like lake turnover - all that cold air warming up and rising, a turbulent transition. It will settle soon.

In promise of that, this morning is gorgeous warm and still. Everyone is loving it.

Besides, it's not like any of you called me on it. The full moon. All the blogging advice says you have to keep these contracts, to satisfy your readers. "They" also say you have to keep the same schedule. Then there are the massive exceptions like Allie Brosh at Hyperbole and a Half. She has only posted three times so far in 2011. Her third post, which went up last night, already has over six hundred comments. The love is not lagging.

Instead of the exception proving the rule (how I hate that line), the exceptions prove there are no rules, I think.

And that, every once in a while, it's okay to miss the moon.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's...

Supermoon!

Which sounds way better than Worm Moon. Poor Worm Moon, superseded by our current love of all things supersized.

In case you live under a rock, this particular full moon was to appear 14% bigger than the "regular" sized moon, because of the moon's proximity to earth. That's a decent amount of moon supersizing. From the left to the right is a 14% increase.

Several people commented they tried to photograph the Supermoon. It doesn't come out right, does it? It's because the cameras still aren't as good as our eyes. This goes back to the "we photograph light" thing. The great big full moon is so bright against the dark sky, that it ends up being just this blob of a spotlight to the camera. No picking up the subtle shadows of the Sea of Tranquility. No gentle smile of the rising moon.

You'll notice the best photographs are the ones where the sky is still pretty light, so there's less extreme contrast. Or, like this one, where a few clouds mute the brightness, allowing for something less than glare.

At any rate, hopefully you got to see it. Lots of people had clouds. Even if you didn't, it was really the same gorgeous moon we see come and go every night and day. The Worm Moon is for the advent of robins and the worms they eat. The soil is warming and thawing. The birds are singing. Yesterday was also the Spring Equinox.

I forgot to mention last month that the Chinese Year of the Rabbit that we just kicked into is also the year of the moon. Here's a neat bit I found:

According to Chinese tradition, the Rabbit brings a year in which you can catch your breath and calm your nerves. Not many people know that the Rabbit is the symbol of the Moon, while the Peacock is the symbol of the Sun, and that together, these two animal signs signify the start of day and night, represent the Yin and Yang of life. It is said that anyone making supplications for wishes to be fulfilled are certain to get what they want... and in the Year of the Rabbit, the wish-granting aspect of the Sun and the Moon combined is multiplied. The Moon is YIN and this is the Yin of Heaven, signifying magic. Thus on each of the Full Moon nights of this year, go out into your garden to gaze into the Full Moon and visualize plenty of Moon dust and Moon glow flowing into you, filling your whole body with bright white light and granting you fearlessness, love and courage. This will not only strengthen your inner "Chi" energy, it will also bring wisdom into your life.

So, go make your wishes on the moon. Catch your breath. Calm your nerves.

Fill yourself with moon dust and moon glow.

Go be fearless and wise.

Supermoon!

Bulan Lapar

Okay, I know that's not really how you say it.

My friend on Twitter, my kawan, @Arzai is Malaysian. She's read Petals and Thorns, which gives me such a kick, that this lovely woman all the way in Malaysia has read my story. She kind of shakes her head at my enthusiasm and says that she's certain many people in Malaysia have read it, that Malaysia, after all, is a very big place. But she's the one I know about and I get all pleased thinking about it.

Last night she was teaching me Malay words and phrases on Twitter. I asked her for full moon (bulan penuh), since I knew this would be my morning post. I then asked if Hunger Moon would be bulan lapar, since she'd already taught me that "lapar" is hungry. She didn't think that would be right. Then she came back and asked what "Hunger Moon" means.

I had to explain that it's not really English, either. That the full moon names are English translations of Native American concepts. In this case, the moon itself isn't hungry, but that this is the moon that's full during the time of hunger. It's still deep winter here, I told her, and though spring is coming, it will be a while before the plants grow again. This is the time when stores grown thin.

She said she'd learned something and I realized what a cultural difference that is. Even though our replete grocery stores keep us fed year-around now, we still have those underlying concepts, from our frontier ancestors and native neighbors, that winter is a time of privation. Something those in the tropics don't experience in the same way.

So, here's to the Hunger Moon, that rises over the mountains in Santa Fe and the beaches in Malaysia.

And to the ways we connect, great and small, across our little world.

Wolf Moon

I'd like to take you all on a little Santa Fe vacation today. Come sit on my porch. It's a bit chilly, but we have a heater. Here, you can sit next to it.


Sit with me and watch the full Wolf Moon rise.


I made sure to check the time and paid attention to where the moon rose the night before. Still, at first I wondered if I had it right. Then the sky began to lighten with that silver blue light that can be only moon.

Finally a sliver of moon peeked above the hillside.

This part seems to happen so much more quickly. Even though I know in my head that we are turning faster than it's moving, it still seems like the moon hurries.

Full of light, it brightens the hills.

And the clouds above.

Nearly free of the hills.

And here is where I didn't do so well. Hopefully you're not feeling moonrisus interruptus. See how the focus is already blurring? The moon was so very bright, it took over the lens. All subsequent photographs look like a big white circle in a field of black.

Too bad, because my eyes could see so much more - the subtle shadows of the face of the moon.

I'll get better at this, I swear.

Why I like writing? If, in the morning, the ending looks unfocused - I can always fix it.

Long Night Moon

Last night was the solstice moon, the Long Night Moon. And you also likely knew, unless you live under a rock, that there was a full lunar eclipse also.

No, I didn't get any photos of the eclipse. We had a fair amount of cloud cover last night. I got up at 12:45 to see, but to no avail. It's funny here - the clouds will lay low and flat over the top of us, but the horizons will be more or less clear.

So I caught the moon here, rising full on the longest night of the year.

And here she is again, over fourteen hours later, after a long, leisurely stroll across the sky and through the earth's shadow, to set into the pink of sunrise.

The long night is over. Now we turn our eyes to the east, and the first day in our steps towards summer again.

Looks pretty glorious to me.

Frosty Moon

Crazy Gym Lady (as I walk in the door): "Let's see, she's got on her red coat and teal headband - she's all ready for Christmas!"

Me: "Um, but it has nothing to do with Christmas."

Crazy Gym Lady: "Well, I'm very visual."

~

This moon is from Saturday evening. I would have liked to catch it last night, but I foolishly scheduled an FFP board meeting at the same time as moonrise. But, since the moon was technically fully full at 10:27am Sunday morning, the night before is pretty much the same as the night after.

November's moon is the Frosty Moon. It's also called the Full Beaver Moon. I am not Tawna Fenske, however, so I decided to stay away from that one.

Saturday wasn't frosty at all. In fact, it was fully and gorgeously warm. Doesn't that picture look like a summer sky? We went hiking and sat on the patio for cocktails. But, as if ushered in by the Frosty Moon, cold weather hit last night. The wind roared in, freezing rain pelted the windows. Between the bright, full moon and the turbulent storm, we and the animals woke several times during the night. This morning shows a dusting of our first snow.

Seems appropriate for Thanksgiving week to me.

Which, um, has nothing to do with Christmas.

Hunters Moon

Our weather has finally turned. Gone are the hot, dry baking days.

The last week has been cool. All night long the rain pounds on our flat roof, a soothing sound that makes me want to tuck deeper into the warm covers.

I thought I might not catch the rising Hunters Moon, but then it crested the cloud banks over Tonto National Forest, in all its radiant glory.

We lead fortunate lives, that we don't worry about hunting for the winter. We may fret about paying the credit card bill or defaulting on the mortgage, but we aren't watching the descending long nights with trepidation, wondering if we've put enough food by to last all the way though deep winter and spring blizzards. We don't look at our children and wonder which won't be around for the next summer.

Perhaps worry is worry and the subject doesn't matter.

It's human nature, I suppose, to take the blessings for granted and focus on what we don't have. We angst about what people might think of us, whether we can win the lottery and get that million dollars, if that agent will request a full manuscript. It's not that these concerns aren't important. If they weren't meaningful to us, they wouldn't occupy our attention.

But we're not counting on the full moon to give us a little more light to hunt by either. Instead, it's just a beautiful orb, illuminating the night.

Corn Moon

I know a lot of people are calling this the Super Harvest Moon, but it's traditionally the Corn Moon in September.

This full moon coincided with the autumn equinox, with the moon rising as the sun set - thus the "super" part. I'm not sure who coined that term. It smacks a bit of "super-size-me," and I kind of doubt the Native Americans of North America, who coined the full-moon names had the concept of "super," but I could be wrong.

"Ho, Little Elk, did the Great Spirit reward your hunting?"

"Yes, Red Eagle, the Great Spirit sent me a Super-buck deer. We shall eat well tonight."

See what I mean?

At any rate, this photo of the corn moon is not from last night, but from the night before. We were reliably forecast for rain to come in yesterday, to the tune of 80%. The forecasting types could apparently see this one coming from a long ways off - a long chain of heavy-bellied clouds working like a conveyor belt to bring gulf moisture up to us.

So I took the photo the night before, just in case. Which was a good thing because we had pouring rain all afternoon and night. We never saw the sun, much less the set and the moonrise.

Which was perfectly fine because we hadn't had any moisture for weeks and weeks. Everything had become dusty, cracking dry.

The calendar shows the full moon on one day, but really it's full for about three days. Depending on how far off of full, you might see it slightly gibbous, with a slight shaving off of one side. It's not always easy to pinpoint, that exact moment of perfect fullness, when the waxing stops and the waning starts. We're back to my pendulum now.

I take comfort in that concept, that nothing in nature is ever a fixed point. Instead, our universe is a dynamic system, in constant change.

What appears to be still is simply a snapshot.

Red Moon and Good Dreams

Full moon rising over the harbor at Newport.

Because it was in August, it was the Red Moon. Aptly named. I'd had an idea that I'd try to blog all the full moons for the next year, but then I went and missed the first one due to vacation lassitude. I'll make it up with the September moon.

You'll see.

I had the best dream last night. One of those dreams that are so lovely, I’m still riding on the happy wave of it.

And, oh yeah, it was total wish-fulfillment.

I dreamed the agent that I mailed my first 100 pages to the other day called me and said she wanted to visit me to talk about my book. She came to my house and I had to pull the book from the library that had her critique notes in it. She told me they were in the Ignatius volume.

(Um, no, I have no idea what any of that means. It was a dream, okay?)

She pronounced it Ignashus and I thought maybe it should be Ignateeus, since it was Latin, but I didn’t say anything. She had me also read my synopsis to her, which I’d written on lettuce leaves. (Doesn’t everyone?) That one, I think could be related to the fact that she tweets about lunch a fair amount.

At any rate, it was wonderful, validating and everything I hope will happen. I knew that my book would be published and published well. I woke up feeling happy about it.

I’m still happy.

Even though I only mailed it on Tuesday, so I know it’s all wishing, even if it comes from the heart.

Still, Snow White is dancing around and singing, cartoon bluebirds flitting about.

Lovely day.

En Route

We left Santa Fe this morning at 4 am, the full moon dropping to the horizon as we made our way to Albuquerque.

I spend a lot of time in airports. But this is vacation, so I tried to set up this trip so we weren't exhausting ourselves just to get there.

It ended up feeling like leisurely hopping, from Albuquerque to Dallas/Fort Worth, to Miami to San Juan. This is a really neat sculpture on the E Concourse at DFW. It makes music while you walk through it.

It feels like found art, except that someone put it there on purpose. It's an unexpected delight, nonetheless.

We're spending the night in San Juan. Tomorrow morning we'll hang by the pool. I'll get a little writing done. Then we'll fly to Tortola and take a ferry to Virgin Gorda. I like this wending. With every stop, the weather has warmed and moistened. With each stage, the pace slows and we ratchet down to match.

(For my work cronies - we're staying at that same Isla Verde Embassy Suites. And the access road is still torn up in exactly the same way. It's as if time hasn't passed.)

This evening we had dinner and drinks on the beach. And I got to meet up with Melissa Arroyo, FFP's conference coordinator this year. She and I had only met online before this, so we had fun talking in person. She's a real dynamo. Now when we meet at the September conference in New Orleans, we'll recognize each other.

And son of a gun, this evening? There was that full moon again, rising up through the palm trees, seeing us on our way.

Luscious Luddites

If the Harvest Moon rises like a big pumpkin, then the Worm Moon sets like a peach. The April moon is the Pink Moon. We'll have to see if it's any pinker than this.

I wasn't on the internet much over the weekend. Not really on purpose. On Saturday I did my writing and booked out fairly early for a day of power-shopping for patio furniture with a friend, along with lunch at the Guadalupe Cafe. It involved a lot of back-and-forthing and comparisoning. By the time I got home, with an enormous box of pool lounger wedged into the back of the convertible, I was tired. We did cocktails and movie-watching.

Never did turn on the laptop again.

Then Sunday was for grocery-shopping and the purchase of the rest of the patio furniture that I hadn't wanted to go back and buy on Saturday, because it would have meant leaving the aforementioned enormous box in my convertible in the parking lot. Then there was yet another trip back and forth, attempting to wedge more enormous boxes into too-small vehicles.

After that I spent the afternoon assembling patio furniture, hanging outdoor art and cleaning up the yard. It felt good to be outside in the sun. I learned how to drill through stucco. I did not do anything on my electronic To-Do list.

And it was good.

Someone mentioned on Twitter the other day that people had noted conversations were slow these days. Being my flip self, I asked if she meant the people or the medium. She said both. Then offered that perhaps, with the warming weather, people were spending more time outside.

That's okay, I think. It's good to walk away from the internet and spend some time in the sun.

I've received a lot of interesting feedback on Saturday's post about Kindle vs. iPad. The comments on the post give good insight to the mind of the reader. On Twitter, one techie blogger said that I might be the first person to fault the iPad for allowing me to multitask, but also called my post an "intelligent article." So I didn't say that I can hardly be the first to think so, I just might be one of the first to publicly complain about it.

I was surprised though, how many people contacted me to say they agreed - that for them reading is the last refuge from multi-input activities. It's a time to settle and concentrate on one thing.

It should be noted these are all readers. People who love to read and want to enjoy it.

RoseMarie sent me this really interesting study that she thought would shed some light on the real market for the iPad. She's right: they want the universities. The study tested out what would become the Kindle DX in several college classes. This is an interesting finding:

During the time of the study, the retail price of the Kindle DX was $489. Other eReader pricing varied from $199 to $859.13 When students were asked if they would purchase a Kindle DX (or other dedicated eReader) for academic use, they indicated that the price would need to drop dramatically –– to less than $100 –– in order for them to seriously consider purchasing one. However, many students suggested that they would be willing to spend considerably more for a multi-function device, such as a tablet or netbook, if it eliminated the need to own a laptop (and if it were as comfortable as an eReader for prolonged reading).

Multi-function device, eh? And a very juicy market.

A couple of other things to note from the study are that students found they concentrated better with an eReader that removed the temptation to check email or surf the web and that some of the students noted that they didn't experience eyestrain reading on the computer. That's notable to me because Kev has argued with me that it's a generational thing, that the younger people don't mind reading on the computer. I think eye strain is eye strain and they're just still too young to really feel the impact. But we shall see.

What's becoming clear to me is that the recreational reader isn't really on the marketing radar here.

I don't want to become yet another person proclaiming the death of publishing, but I think this approaches the core of the issues with books and readers. The people who sell stuff, the black-magic marketers, want to simplify books into a commodity. That's their job. Sell the product they want to sell for the price they want. But books don't fall neatly into the commodity-niche. They are essentially immaterial - a story, a feeling, a time in a different head or a different world.

Reading is, in the end, solitary and intimate.

Maybe I'm naive, but I'm not sure I believe you can sell that.

Patience Panties

A gal I talk to on Twitter, @Uppington, recently finished reading Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides, which remains one of my all-time favorite novels. There's this exquisite moment when the mother shows the children the sun setting at the exact moment the moon rises. Conroy is a master of character and setting. He weaves both together to create in the reader the magic of that moment.

I don't know if Conroy suggested it to me, but I always feel the magic of that moment. Here it's the moon setting into the valley, an ocean of fog, the quiet blues and blacks of night giving way to glimmering pinks. I turn around, and there is the sunrise, blazing into the fire of day.


Those moments between are unbearably full.

I'm waiting between things right now. Writers are often cautioned to be patient. (I've mentioned before, this is not my forte.) The romance writers often put this in terms of "putting on your patience panties." I don't know if this is because the overwhelming majority of romance writers are women and identify with the lessons of girlhood or because they're accustomed to the language of motherhood. Writers who become upset about bad contest scores or book reviews are often advised to put on their "big girl panties" and suck it up. I suppose men will tell each other to "cowboy up" or some such. It's the same thing.

So, what's happened is, an epublisher offered to buy this little erotic novella I wrote. They have a good reputation, so that will be fine. Another epublisher with a slightly better rep also has it, so I inquired with them if they were close to a decision or if I should just withdraw the novella and go with the other publisher. I got a very strange, misspelled, answer back that basically said I'd hear when I heard. The first epublisher is looking better and better all the time.

Meanwhile, this agent has my full manuscript. She requested it from a query I sent, so I've been somewhat more hopeful on this one. The other agents who've requested my full MSS are ones who met me at conferences. When agents or editors meet you in person, I think they're somewhat more inclined to ask for the full MSS, because they know you and want to give you the best opportunity they can. One of those agents also has Obsidian: The Revision. She'd passed on the original version, but agreed to read the revision. I haven't heard from her, so I'm not holding out much hope there.

But the agent reading from the query... Well, let's just say I've been to this prom before and came home without an engagement ring.

At any rate, I emailed her to ask if she cared if I entered a deal on the epubbing of the novella. I expected her to say no, but she answered and said she'd read the full right away and we could discuss then.

So, I'm waiting. Knowing she's reading it. Making a decision. Totally out of my control. I'm afraid to check my email, since that will likely be a "no." I'm carrying my cell phone out to the mailbox with me, in case she calls with a "yes."

I'm thirteen again.

At the same time, I know this day will end with the sun setting and the moon rising to replace it. Fire will give way to black and tomorrow morning it will all repeat.

And I have my own washer and dryer, so I can wash my patience panties as often as necessary.

Moonset at Sunrise

The moon has been so bright the last few nights that it shines in our west-facing bedroom like a spotlight.

Every night, the moon rises one hour later. So the time the moon shines in our window has gotten progressively later. The last few nights, we've awakened when the moon hit the window at just after midnight, then 1:30 and so on. Last night I woke up at 3:45 and got up to pee, which is fairly usual for me. When I came back to bed, David was sitting on the side of the bed, which is very unusual. He gave me a bright-eyed look and said "time to get up?"

Um no, I told him. I realized the room was so bright from the moon it could look like sunrise. It's not even four o'clock yet.

Oh good, he says, lays down and promptly goes back to sleep. If he was ever really awake at all.

I was awake for a while, watching the mooon shine in. I inherited the family gene for fretting in the middle of the night. Fortunately I don't do it often, or for very long.

Having the moon there comforted me.

When we got up to the alarm call at six, the moon still hung there, just setting as the sun rose.

Soon it was gone and the day belonged entirely to the sun.

The Cat Who Walks by Herself

I said to David last night that it's very tempting for me just to tuck in here with him, in our house in the country where I know practically no one.

This was after he didn't mind me jumping up to take a picture of the moon after he'd made love to me in a particularly sweet way, because I was feeling all distressed about a social conflict. (Sorry if that's TMI -- just keep going, I won't do it again.)

Some philosophies promote the idea of becoming a hermit. The whole fantasy of living alone in a cave or on a mountain top. Or even in a cloister with a lovely vow of silence.

I come by this naturally, as an only child. I love to be by myself. It's soothing. A friend once argued with me that I only like to be alone because I don't have to be. Meaning that I have a partner where she didn't. I could see her point, but I don't think that's the case.

In fact, David is a miracle of a person for me because being with him feels as good as being alone.

I think it's a harmony thing. I have friends that draw energy from social interaction. They thrive on it and spiral up ever higher. For me, it's a drain. I can do it for a while, but after a time I have to be alone to recharge.

But I think the hermit thing is a cop out.

The way I see it, we're all here on this planet, crammed together, to learn something. And the something clearly involves interacting with each other. Otherwise it wouldn't be so damn painful. And joyous, too.

It's a funny world now. Though I live out in this quiet house and frequently see no one but David and the fur family all day -- and yes, I love love love it -- I talk online to many many people. Some friends, some acquaintances. It's almost like being on campus again. Some people I just wave to. Some say something funny as we pass on the sidewalk. Others I sit down and have lunch with. It feels like a full social day.

And, as you probably suspect, I love that I can turn the connection off again, too.


Hey -- at least I'm not doing the hermit thing!