How to Train Your Dragon

The early commercials I saw advertising this movie left me not wanting to see it. But when I read a good review in the paper last Friday, and then my daughter came home from seeing it with her boyfriend and gushed about it, I decided to give it a try.

Wow! I would recommend it to anyone. I've only seen it in 3D, but I've heard that you won't be disappointed if you don't see it in 3D. The animation is wonderful, and the flying sequences actually take your breath away - not just because it's a whopper of a ride, but because it's actually downright beautiful. No kidding. And I liked the story too, mostly because Hiccup - the boy hero - is so wonderful, his story, his predicament, his expressions, the whole thing.

And we have a little gray cat that has big, green eyes just like the dragon : )

I know this is a kid's movie, but this was one of the best movies I've seen, visually and story-wise, in a long time. Probably since Julie and Julia.

I'm terrible at summing things up, so what I will say is that the animation was absolutely stunning, and the story was terrific, and it actually touched me.

The 3D ticket is pricey, so try to catch a matinee and save a few bucks. Even if you pay full price, though, you won't be disappointed.

Plotting...

Not a novel, or even an evil plan to take over the world. Plotting, as in a garden plot. I now have a 10 x 20 plot in the community gardens!

I have to get busy plotting what to put on my plot. Although planting season is still pretty far off around these parts.

At my daughter's request...

Here are a couple of pictures that my daughter took and wanted me to put on my blog.

First, here is our dog, Strider with a bow on his head. My daughter put it there and he was oblivious until I finally took it off before we ventured out for our walk:

And this is how I had to prepare for a walk only last month:

With temperatures in the single digits from the wind chill, and snow nearly up to the knees, I dressed in layers: long johns, jeans, fleece pants over the jeans, sweater, two sweatjackets with both hoods up, extra-long scarf wrapped twice around the head, two layers of mittens, and sunglasses only becuase it was a rare sunny day and I didn't want to go snow blind, and gaiters over the boots to keep the snow out.

We've had much better walking weather lately - I've been out many times already with no jacket of any kind at all! What a change a month can make.

Signs of spring!

The Bees are out:

And the crocus are blooming:

In purple:

And white:

And yellow:

New Banner Photo

The new banner photo was actually taken last year in April. I know, I'm looking ahead, but I'm excited about spring.

The photo is of a garden in the Amish country.

Yay!

I have my computer back! It was a minor trouble that brought it down, but it took a few days to set it right.

I will have to work on a new banner picture. The snow is gone now - hurray! Spring is really here. We may get a little bit of snow next week, but I've seen the crocuses, so spring is here.

It's been very mucky with the snow melting slowly over the past two weeks, and rain today. Mucky, mucky, mucky.

We had been planning (although not very hard) to tap into our maples and try our hand at maple syrup this year. This is the time of year to do it, but, alas, we sat on our hands too long and didn't order the equipment. So no maple syrup this year : (

Maybe we won't procrastinate next year.

Is Spring here already?? And, no, I didn't sign the contract.

The weather has been gorgeous here lately, sunny, warming temperatures. Our blanket of snow is looking rather tattered now. A couple more days like this and it'll probably be gone. Wow. It's unusual, we're usually looking at cold and snow through March and sometimes into April. I wonder if it'll stay this way, or if we'll have one last winter hurrah before all is said and done.

In publishing news, I didn't sign the contract, so I remain unpublished. There were a couple of big things in the contract that really made me uncomfortable.

1. They wanted me to assign all of my rights to them in perpetuity. It's recommended to license your rights, not assign them. Assigning rights is generally unrevertible - the rights now belong to the publisher and don't revert back to you. Rights are revertible in a licensing agreement, they revert back to you when the term of the agreement ends. And there are many kinds of rights, not just for printing. They wanted the rights for, "any and all media and forms of expression now known or hereafter devised."
2. They wanted the rights of first and last refusal for, "the Author's next published work in this series or subject matter and the Author's next published work." This means that any similar story and my next published work would be theirs unless they didn't want it. And even if they didn't want it, if I found someone else who did, I would have to take it back to them for a second look to see if they wanted it now that someone else was interested in it.

This is a very small, niche publisher with limited reach. This contract would lock me into them without hope of escape.

Why would anyone sign with them? They are a Mormon publisher, and if you are writing specifically for a Mormon audience, this contract wouldn't be all that bad. Your work would be published and would be distributed to Mormon bookstores (there are Mormon bookstores, just like there are Christian bookstores), and you would have a guaranteed publisher for any future works, as long as they wanted to publish them.

I, however, am not writing specifically for a Mormon audience. How and why did I even come to submit something to them? My brother-in-law is Mormon. He is something of a Mormon apologist - a defender of the faith (you know, like C.S. Lewis). Over the past few years he has published a couple of books on the subject that have been very well received in the Mormon community. This is his publisher, and when they sent out an email to their authors looking for a short Christmas story, he forwarded it to me, knowing that I had one.

It would have been a nice way to break into the publishing world, except for that darned contract. The funny thing is, I actually do have an idea for a book that would target a Mormon audience. The title would be, In Search of the Stray Elder and other Adventures in Jelly Making. You see, an Elder is what a male Mormon missionary is called. The elder in my title refers to elderberry bushes - so the title is a play on words. It would be a recounting of the adventures I've had in finding and collecting fruit for jelly making over the years. So they could have had two books out of me if they had been willing to negotiate.

Oh well. On to bigger and better things, I say : )

More computer problems, and still unpublished

My computer is down temporarily. Son's computer suddenly quit. Daughter's computer occupied. I am currently typing this entry on my daughter's boyfriend's laptop.

Not a good time to be without technology while trying to negotiate a book contract through email.

Found out, however, when I finally accessed my email through the laptop, that the small publishing company won't negotiate the terms of their contract at all. I'm not thrilled with the contract as it stands, so I am considering not signing. Which is disappointing, but I don't want to sign away more than I'm comfortable with (way more than I'm comfortable with).

So as of now, I am still unpublished, and likely to remain so for the time being. But hopefully my computer will be up again soon and I'll get back to the story I'm working on now - which I literally left mid-sentence when lots of things started happening all at once just over a week ago.

I'm itching to get back to that sentence : )

Yikes! I might become a published author!

I was offered a book contract the yesterday by a small publisher for a short Christmas story that I wrote. Yea!

I don't have an agent, so poring over the contract is up to me. I don't want to sign away my firstborn, so I'm trying to make sense of everything. I've caught a few things that need changing, so hopefully this publisher is willing to negotiate.

I have 30 days to sign the thing. Hopefully everything works out in the end. It'd be nice to have something published!

Cross-country hijinks

I haven't posted for a while. Been busy with other things.

These pictures are from about a week ago. My husband and I dusted off the cross-country skis. I'm a little rusty - especially if there's a hill. But at least nobody can tell if I fell or not, right?:

I figure with a few more practices, I'll be ready for the Nordic Combined:

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you snow, go play!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day! My husband left this for me to find on a hike through a snowy park:

The name of the park is Gorge Metro Park in Akron, OH. It's in a river gorge, so there are plenty of interesting rock formations. The snow adds to the interest:

And there are some frozen little streams here and there:

Here's a snowy scroll (or a wig):

And as a parting shot, I'll throw in this picture, can you find the heart? Mother Nature left this one for hikers to find:

The Secret of Roan Inish

If you have never encountered this movie before, I would highly recommend it. It tells a beautiful tale about family and the pull of love - and there are many kinds of love, not just romance, although you'll find that there, too.

If you're the kind to sit by a fire telling an listening to tales, then this movie is a must. Roger Ebert writes about it here, and really gets to the crux of the film's meaning. Here are two quotes from his piece:

"The secret of John Sayles' "The Secret of Roan Inish" is that it tells of this young girl with perfect seriousness. This is not a children's movie, not a fantasy, not cute, not fanciful. It is the exhilarating account of the way Fiona rediscovers her family's history and reclaims their island. If by any chance you do not believe in Selkies, please at least keep an open mind, because in this film Selkies exist in the real world, just like you and me."


"One can easily guess how this legend could have been simplified and jollied up in other hands - how it could have been about cute little Selkies. But legends are, after all, told by adults, not children, and usually they record something essential to the culture that produces them. What this legend says, I think, is that the people who tell it live on the land but live from the sea, so that their loyalties are forever divided."

Don't know what a selkie is? Watch this movie and wonder no more.

We own a VHS version of the movie. I'll have to upgrade to a DVD version. It's available from my library, and lord knows that I make use of my library so much that my library card is smoking, but this is one of those things that I want to have for my very own.

The soundtrack is also very nice, sometimes while listening to it I want to get up and dance a jig.

So find this gem at your library, or rental store, or purchase it. If you have a fanciful mind, you won't be disappointed.

What we woke up to this morning

We got about a foot of snow overnight. The wind piled up some drifts that were deeper:

Snowy walks are the best:

When the snow stopped early this morning the clouds started to disappear, and now we have a rare blue sky and sun:

Ceiling Cat - the muse

To ensure that I have a muse to inspire my writing, my daughter has put ceiling cat above my workplace:

She found the ceiling cat papercraft here.

This is the original ceiling cat, from lolcats, not to be confused with basement cat, his nemesis:

There are lots of things to distract me from my writing:

Hopefully ceiling cat will keep me on track.

An Icy Excursion

My husband and I went for a stroll in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park yesterday. Here's a covered bridge that you can find in the park:

It was pretty cold and we saw lots of icy crystals in interesting shapes:

and patterns:

You can find the remains of an old sandstone quarry in one part of the park. One of the quarry walls is in the background below. The stacked stones here, I think, are spalls - the parts that were trimmed off of larger blocks in the sizing process and left lying around:

Sharp crystals laced the tops of frozen ponds, streams, puddles and rivers:

Some tumbling blocks of Berea sandstone:

Sandstone steps leading nowhere in particular:

We didn't follow the steps today, maybe we'll go nowhere in particular some other day : )

Keeping the faith - some writerly advice

Kristin Cashore, author of Graceling and Fire, has a nice post up about keeping the faith while writing, even if you feel your manuscript is "a total mess".

She emphasizes that, yeah, your book might fail, but it definitely will fail if you quit writing it. She talks about faith and doubt, and how you can have both at the same time - give yourself permission to believe even as you have your doubts, and don't fail because you didn't work hard enough.

Only, she says it all so very much better. See her post here.

And talking about writing, I almost seem to jinx myself if I talk about my writing here. I'll throw caution to the wind, though, and say that I am indeed writing, and the story is coming along nicely so far.

Heading West

This summer my family and I will be loading up the pack mules and heading out west:

I suspect we'll be gone for a couple of weeks or so, visiting relatives and seeing sights.

These pictures are of Bryce Canyon. We took them on a trip we made out west five years ago.

This time we'll be further south. We'll be in Texas, New Mexico, and possibly Arizona.

The sights in those parts of the west are very different from the Bryce Canyon area in Utah. On our trip this summer, we'll be seeing things like White Sands National Monument, Carlsbad Caverns, and lots of other interesting things.

I just wanted to warm up a bit and think ahead to summer and the hot, sunny southwest.

The Reindeer People

This book just came in from my hold list at the library. I've read some excerpts online already - it's a captivating look, via an anthropological study, at the reindeer herders of Siberia.

Can't wait to crack it open today and sink into it. These people are descendents of the peoples who erected the reindeer stones in mongolia thousands of years ago when Mongolia still had the climate to support reindeer. Maybe that's why I like fantasy. I'm an anthropologist by training and sometimes, as evidenced in lore, myth and ancient religion, beliefs can often be quite fantastic - and fascinating. As, of course, can be what has happened to these peoples today.

Blackbringer, by Laini Taylor

This week I was going to start on a new story idea in earnest. I’ve begun gathering information, I have books on hold at the library for research purposes, I have websites bookmarked, I have some doodles and a few fragmentary elements jotted down. The whole process started over a year ago, maybe two, when I tagged some websites and wrote down a couple of ideas, but then it all sat, unlooked at, on my computer for a long time.

I dusted things off a week or so ago and started the wheels in motion again. I’ve been excited to sit down with books all around me, websites at my disposal, a pen and notebook in hand and begin the dreaming stage – when I sit and stare, read through various tomes, look up rosters of ancient names, and let things coalesce into the story that tugged at me, waiting to take form in the first place.

But then everything screeched to a halt. Why? Because a young adult fiction book that I had put on hold a few weeks ago finally came in at the library, and, like a fool, I began reading in on Sunday. I couldn’t put it down and all of my wonderful plans for starting my new story in earnest flew out the window on faerie wings – specifically on wings of the Faeries of Dreamdark.

The book in question is Laini Taylor’s Blackbringer, the first of now two books featuring the Faeries of Dreamdark.

Laini Taylor has one of those minds that can pull forgotten bits of lore from far flung places and twine them together with her own imagination to make something wonderful and deeply satisfying. The world she creates is solid and remarkable and her characters are unforgettable.

Blackbringer is the story of faerie lass, Magpie Windwitch, and her clan of crow friends. She is a bit remarkable, as faeries go, because she travels the world where most faeries stay in their forests. She also hunts devils, something that faeries used to do, but have forgotten all about. But she and her crow friends have learned something about the old days – the days of the devil wars – by traveling with her parents who find the lost, forgotten temples and read through their ancient libraries.

But not all devils are alike, it seems. When Magpie and her feathered friends come across evidence of some new kind of devil, unwittingly set loose from its prison, it’s nothing like they’ve ever encountered before. And Magpie must find the ones who trapped it all those millennia ago – if they even still exist – to see if it can be trapped again before this very old, very powerful force proves to be the unraveling of the world.

I’ve put the second Faeries of Dreamdark book, Silksinger, on hold at the library. I can’t wait for it to come in, and when it does, there’ll be another few days that my own story will be put on hold so that I can once again enter Magpie Windwitch’s adventurous world, and hopefully learn a thing or two about how to write a remarkable story.

A study in crystals

Get comfy and pull up a seat:


It was frosty as well as snowy this morning, so when I went out to replenish the bird feeder, I grabbed my camera to snap some frosty pictures. Click on any of the photos for a close-up view.

A crystal-encrusted tulip tree bud sleeping through the cold:

Thorns and frost:

I heard yesterday that all snowflakes are hexagons. Is that true for frost crystals too?:

It's a rare sunny day. Maybe I'll go out for a snowy adventure. Hope you're staying warm!