I'm sitting in a hotel in Budapest, looking at the Danube River and the Chain Bridge.

FOR REAL!!!!!! OMGPONIES!!!!11!1!!!

ahem. I haven't written since Nov. 3, so for three days, I have 3452. A good enough start. I'm not liking the voice so far, and I have a third character that I sketched a while back and can't remember who s/he is. So, at some point, that voice will start talking and I'll say, "OH, nice to meet you!"

by the way, it's not blue, the river. It's river-running-through-large-city-in-winter gray. But still beautiful.... and did I mention the palace on the hill?

I have meetings all day with editors and folks, and so I have to be sharp. Must.have.coffee.

Luckily, they have some of that here.

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Today begins Día de los Muertos.  What are your rituals or occasions when you remember loved ones you have lost?

This really bugs me. A lot. Offensively.

This is NOT my holiday. I understand, respect and find the day and the traditions fascinating. I celebrate as a human on the planet all the variety and color of human culture... I dig the idea of this day, and I am moved beyond words when I witness the practices.

but this is NOT my "tradition" and it's not the day I choose to remember my loved ones. To do so, I think, would be cultural misappropriation and an affront to my comadres and compadres.

And my loved ones are freshly lost, so this comes as a little slap to me. To make it a little "cute" QotD prompt belittles the grief process, and the very serious side of honoring the dead (and fearing them - giving them the day to walk the earth, placating them and then sending them back to the other side).

(and my response to this reminds me that I'm going to be writing a cross-cultural novel this month, so these are issues worth the energy and word count of this post.)

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I was talking on the phone to a friend yesterday, and said that maybe instead of NaNoWriMo this year, I would devote the equivalent amt. of time to developing my website(s) and contract business.

Here is why I absolutely adore her, why she is my BFF even if we never see each other anymore because she's in Tucson and I'm here in Texas.

She responded, "yes, that would be good, but I think you should do both. Still work on the novel because remember last year? when you were at work? (we were both in the office last year, and now we both telecommute) You used to come in and talk about your story and you were so excited by it. So you really should do that again."

**** <3 ****

Everyone needs cheerleaders like that.

I'm going to find a way to put her in the novel too, as homage to her support.

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There will be more entries today. This is just the starting gun (for me).

We survived Oct. 31, with only 3 lbs of candy. Heh.

I downloaded Scrivener, with the 30 day free trial. *YES* should be perfect. And I'm looking for the little synopsis I did last year of the book I'll be writing.

title: The Road To Navidad.

Are you with me!? be on my team! cheer me on! I'm hoping for 5,000 between now and when I touch down in Budapest.

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Alright. So it's Riley.

Now I need to just block out my week, and find time to get to 5,000 words before I land in Europe for my very busy week of work.

I've always thought of the Navidad story as something that did NOT come from Riley's voice, but if he is that engaging a character, that I'm reprising him... then I guess I'd better get into his head and talk like him, rather than just describing his oddness.

I have to be the oddness.

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Despite the egregious license taken with the NOUN "novel" by the folks at NaNoWriMo, I am going to participate in this event in a few days.

Yes, I'm going overseas on business trip for a week smack in the middle, but I'm thinking of trans-Atlantic flights and odd jet-lagged hours in a hotel room and a dearth of internet connectivity (that's free), and there you have a few hours in the day to make up for the trip.

Hungary. I'm going to Hungary.

Stay tuned. I won't be writing anywhere else about my writing. The NaNo forums are horribly slow this year. I might post one or two things but that's about it. I might write protected entries, so let me know if you want to be a friend, etc.

I need to see if there's a newer version of Scrivener. That was a very useful thing last year.

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What's your cure for the common cold?

I head straight for the EmergenC and a good fresh batch of pesto. And if that doesn't do the trick, I continue with the garlic - fresh, crushed in olive oil mopped up with good bread.

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Writing. I was just going to get back to my novel, when tragedy struck. Really. That is not a line from a novel, but maybe it should be.

I'm leaving the city where my novel is set, so I am soaking up a lot of ambience and character from the streets, hills, people and places... I hope to capture it faithfully. And make up the rest seamlessly.

I'm getting a laptop and thus will have the opportunity to "write anywhere." Right. We'll see.

So, yes, my plan is to do a mini-NaNo in July. It will be NaNoRevMo. National Novel Revising Month, though I still have about 30 or 40% to add to the novel to make it coherent. And July because I hope to be unpacked at my new house, settling in but not yet distracted by soccer, karate, etc. My work year cranks up hard in October, so I need to be done with Parked in Tucson by then. Done enough to show, anyway.

If you're reading this, hope you're having fun and/or being productive and all.

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IN my last post, which was far too long ago, I mentioned a Petri dish wherein some new wonderful good thing was growing.

I can say with gladness and gratitude that it indeed has grown and is real.

Here's the thing:
* I am moving to Dallas, Texas with my son.
* We will live in my brother's house, which he was going to sell but didn't get around to it in his last days.
* I secured permission to telecommute with my current job, so I don't have to quit and look for a new one.
* I have plans to homeschool said son at least for the summer, if not for all of sixth grade and possibly seventh, depending on my success.

All the shoes that needed to drop in order for this to happen dropped with minimum effort, but never at the moment I thought they would. I prepped and sold my current house (closing on June 5), I took care of some annoying credit issues to secure a new loan, and I moved my job description more toward what I have been doing for free all these years. There are some other things that I would like to see happen, but now that I have gotten the hang of the Cosmic Supply Company, I'm just not going to push it. I placed my order, and I know it will be filled.

The only real "problems" now are deciding if I take with us or sell the piano and my parents' bedroom set. The former has massive sentimental value and potential for future musical endeavors; the latter is convenient to have but not really my style, very bulky to move and somewhat redundant. If it weren't for the high cost of moving stuff across country, I might keep it and decide what to do. But then again, I wonder if it's worth something to someone and I could put it on craig's list to help defray the cost of moving?

In any event, the forecast for more creativity and more time to write is very very sunny.

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It is rather strange that a plan is evolving wherein I'll have more time to write. Strange because it's actually growing in a Petri dish right now, never expecting it to be able to sustain viability outside the lab, but who knows? Frankenstein was never expected to lead an agrarian life either. (Go read the real Frankenstein. By Mary Shelley. :-)

Still dealing with stupid things that require faxing of death certificates and taking time off work. And a lassitude that hampers a real good belly laugh. Its name is probably Guilt, which is normal but oh so heavy and unwelcome a visitor in my life right now. I need Atlas.

Also assessing the past year of "dwindling access to the community" as the geriatric shrinks like to phrase it... and how my dad wasn't all that tuned into what my life was really like and how I was spinning a tidy little fiction for him. And how I might write that novel, since I'm not really living it.

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