Thought Candy

Because I am writing a YA (Young Adult) novel that takes place in the ocean, with merpeople and magic, my wonderful Reading Angel and YA Book Goddess April has been on the lookout for undersea fiction for me.

She shared a link to the 2014 animated film Song of the Sea, which was nominated for an Academy Award (and lost to Big Hero 6).

Even though this movie just came out, I was able to make an interlibrary loan request (thank you, 2015, for getting me around that one-year ILL rule) — and I was blown away by the film.

Song of the Sea is the most emotionally powerful, artistically exquisite animated feature I’ve seen in a long time. It’s not a tragedy like Grave of the Fireflies, but I think the same level of tears poured out of my face. Maybe more. Not in sadness, but from the force of the tale. Song of the Sea is a retelling of the Celtic myth of the selkie, a mythological being (usually a female one) who lives as a human on land and as a seal underwater. This film is a masterpiece. The art, the music, and this gorgeous, gorgeous story — it took my breath away.

I don’t know how Big Hero 6 beat this film for Best Animated Feature. In my opinion, only the first half of Big Hero 6 was excellent — the second half was so predictable and overdone-dull, I had a fierce attack of the yawns in the movie theater, started shifting in my chair with those okay-I-want-to-be-done-now nerves, and my husband fell asleep. (And Greg watches really boring B Westerns for fun, so it takes a lot for a picture to turn on his snore-machine.)

The moment Song of the Sea ended, I went to Amazon and found a copy for $7.00, which I immediately purchased. The DVD arrived this week, and will now sit in pride of place beside my collection of Hayao Miyazaki films.

April also sent me a copy of the 2008 film Ponyo as a birthday gift, which I’d never seen before, either —

And I’m happy to report that Song of the Sea and Ponyo will now live in harmony together forever on my DVD shelf of animated films, a perfect tribute to the year I turned 35 and started writing a novel set in the ocean. *so much hearts*

While searching for images of Song of the Sea, I came across this brilliant mermaid picture —

I love this piece of art SO much — I want it on canvas one day in my home! One day when I have money again, when my books sell like, five thousand copies a year, and I don’t have to stress about figuring out how to come up with the coins to self-publish Mark of the Pterren — (to say nothing of paying off the mortgage on my mom’s house! Nothing grinds my gears like mortgage stress.) But anyway, in some kind of peaceful future that does not involve my mom’s mortgage, then I could figure out how to have this art in my home.

Song of the Sea is a film by the Irish illustrator, comics artist and filmmaker Tomm Moore. His first film was The Secret of Kells (2009), which I was also able to view via interlibrary loan, and can happily report that this movie is gorgeous and breathtaking and full of wowsa.

I would really love to meet Tomm Moore one day —

That’s a picture of him with characters from The Secret of Kells. You can tell what a cutie-pie he is. Any man who can make art like Tomm Moore is just insta-hunk, no? He could look like the creature from the black lagoon and still be a total dreamboat. I’d love to be able to tell him in person how gorgeous his art is, and how much I love the stories he tells.

In 2014, Moore co-directed a segment of the Salma Hayek produced film The Prophet with Ross Stewart, adapted from Kahlil Gibran’s book of prose poetry essays, The Prophet.

This film isn’t available in North America yet, but I did find this beautiful image Tomm Moore made for the movie — (and I’m sorry it’s so small here, you can view it online in a much larger size) —

Sometimes I fill my computer screen with this image and just feel swept away into joy. I love this art, love this art, love this art. Like that adorable mermaid with the white seal, I want to own a huge canvas of this artwork from The Prophet one day, like five feet by eight feet or something, so big I see it the moment I step into the room. Either above my bed or in an office space where I work, this art is like a primal homecoming for me, an image that is like hearing the sacred sound “Om” in a prayer.

My favorite trailer for The Prophet can be found on this page — The 405, which features a few other trailers along with The Prophet.

But since I couldn’t figure out how to display that trailer in my blog post, I’ve pasted the official trailer below. It’s definitely worth the watch, if you haven’t seen a video for this beautiful movie yet.

It’s kind of impossible to grow up in America and not know anything about King Arthur. The romantic tales of this king, his knights of the round table, his queen, and his adviser, Merlin, are woven into our pop-culture psyches, even if a lot of the attempts to tell this story are lacking.

Like this King Arthur movie —

I saw this film in the theater in 2004, and was so deeply disappointed, and outright horrified, by this clumsy and ignorant movie, I drove home in a haze, asking my husband over and over, “How could anyone make a movie so DUMB??”

A few months ago, King Arthur was playing on Starz, and since eleven years had passed since I’d seen it, and the movie was close to the end, I tuned in to watch the finale. Greg and I were having supper, and I was in a good mood, and thought perhaps, being older and wiser now, there might have been merits to the film the 24-year-old version of me had missed.

Nope. Absolutely not. If anything, the movie was even sillier and more ridiculous than I remembered. I watched the big final battle, which is followed by Arthur’s wedding with Guinevere, and I was carping like a fishwife the whole time about what a lump of steaming stupid this movie is.

My husband nodded along like, “Yeah, honey, you tell our TV where to shove it, playing this moronic movie that you chose to watch.”

Cause Greg always has my back like that.

I never watched the Starz TV series Camelot because King Arthur was so bad. And nine years before King Arthur, there was the equally silly 1995 film First Knight.

The battle and fighting scenes in First Knight are as pathetic and full of dumb as the ones in King Arthur. Also, Sean Connery as King Arthur makes me want to barf. I know a lot of people think Sean Connery is total hotness, but I’ve never been one of those people. I don’t find him attractive, not when he was a young James Bond, and not in his silver years.

Richard Gere is another actor who just doesn’t do it for me. I tolerate him, I love the movie An Officer and a Gentleman, but not because Richard Gere turns on my swoony oh-my-gosh-he’s-so-cute switch. Granted, Richard Gere doesn’t leave me as cold as Sean Connery does, but he’s not much better. I look at both of these men and think, Ew. Please go away. Why couldn’t I be looking at Russell Crowe right now?

Which begs the question — why do I own a copy of First Knight, which is about as dippy a movie as Hollywood can create, when the film stars two actors I don’t care for?

Well, that is simple — I have a massive crush on Julia Ormond, and she is totally gorgeous in First Knight —

She plays Guinevere, the Lady of Lyoness, and I can stare at Julia Ormond in this movie for hours on end. In fact, while I was in college, I had one of those little TVs with a VCR, and I used to stay up all night writing papers, playing this movie over and over. I love the music, and I love Julia Ormond in period dress.

Regardless of the crappy films Hollywood keeps making about King Arthur, it will always be one of those stories that exerts a powerful pull over me, like the combined gravity of the sun and moon creating a spring tide. Arthur is the summoning force, and I am the ocean, always in sway.

Mark of the Pterren is a King Arthur retelling. I think this is the first time I’ve ever admitted such a thing on my blog, though I’ve hashed this out with my husband for years. He’s listened to me spend hours and hours discussing King Arthur, and how Mark of the Pterren is my chance to share a King Arthur tale in a sci-fi novel.

Anyone who has read Love and Student Loans and Other Big Problems should know that the King Arthur story played into that novel as well. Carver Greyson would be Arthur. His late wife would be Guinevere. Anyone who’s read the novel can guess who Lancelot was. These are the things that happen when writers love something so much — they pay homage to the stories that move them.

My favorite King Arthur novel is The Road to Avalon.

Published in 1988, I first read this book as a teenager in 1994 or 1995. I found it at the public library, one night while I was doing my Gollum routine, crouching in the shadows in the back of the room, pulling out books one by one in search of a precious. I rarely do this anymore, since searching bookshelves is a time-consuming activity, but every once in a while, my inner Gollum surfaces, and I have to seek out a bookshelf and read every title, or gaze at their covers and jackets.

I’ve read The Once and Future King, The Mists of Avalon, and this week, I read parts of Le Morte d’Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table. (Not Malory’s original work, but the Keith Baines rendition.)

But no King Arthur story can ever match the love I have for The Road to Avalon. This is a pre-romance Arthur. Before he was sidelined and weakened by all the silly Grail Quest stories and idiot-king-the-cuckold stories and all the other junk that was piled on over the centuries.

The central plot of The Road to Avalon is taken from Malory’s tales from Le Morte d’Arthur. But whereas Arthur is an utter fool in Le Morte, in The Road to Avalon, Arthur is a great warrior. Lancelot is his brave and mighty friend, and Guinevere loves Arthur and Lancelot both.

But in The Road to Avalon, Arthur’s true love isn’t Guinevere, but Morgan, the woman who is usually slandered in Arthur tales (especially in the tales after Malory’s).

I also think The Road to Avalon is much more feminist and pro-women-power than The Mists of Avalon, and that is saying a lot.

When I see Julia Ormond in First Knight, with her wild brown hair and period dress, my mind says, “Oooo, look, it’s Morgan from The Road to Avalon.”

And when I see Russell Crowe in Gladiator —

My mind says, “Oooooo, look, it’s King Arthur in The Road to Avalon.”

Because if there really was an Arthur in Britain’s history who led men into battle, the guy was a total badass. The stories that depict him as old, ineffectual, an idiot cuckold, or anything else but a warrior are absolutely moronic, in my opinion.

If Arthur ever truly existed, this man became legend because he knew how to bring it on a battlefield. Lancelot, Guinevere, Merlin, Morgan, Modred/Mordred, Uther Pendragon, Igraine, Kay/Cai, Galahad, even throwing Tristan and Isolde into the mix — all of those people came into Arthur’s story later. What historical documents exist (and this is debatable, with some historians saying there is no reliable proof that there was ever a war leader named Arthur) — the oldest texts say nothing of magical monsters, wizards, adultery, a search for the Holy Grail, or a sword in a stone or a lake.

For me, it doesn’t matter if there really was an Arthur or not. A war leader, a king — whatever his true title might have been, he can exist or not exist in history, because nothing can erase the fact that the legend of King Arthur is here to stay. As long as there are humans alive on this earth, King Arthur will be alive along with us.

And boy am I glad for that.

Because the beauty of the best King Arthur tales is the question of what happens when three people who love each other get mixed up with adultery. When the law says two of them are married, and sex with a third person is illegal. When all three of them would die for each other, but an affair still means someone is going to get hurt.

That’s my fascination with Arthur. As a writer, I’m drawn the most powerfully to same-sex friendships and love stories, and the Arthur/Lancelot/Guinevere story has both. A powerful same-sex friendship (not only with Arthur and Lancelot, but all of the Knights of the Round Table), and a powerful love story. But unlike a Twilight-esque love triangle (which features Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, and Jacob the Werewolf) — in King Arthur, the love flows all ways, not just from Arthur and Lancelot toward Guinvevere, but from the two men to each other.

Arthur and Lancelot’s love for each other played a role in my first novel, The Etiquette of Wolves — in female form. While Alistair and Zach can be seen as a Lancelot/Arthur pairing (Alistair would be Lancelot, Zach would be Arthur) — the friendships between Jimmy and Noelle, and Kim and Cadence, are much more dominant in the story.

I didn’t sit down to write that book thinking, “Hmmm… maybe I should write a female version of Arthur and Lancelot,” but my subconscious sure did. As I worked on editing Mark of the Pterren this week, facing again and again how I have altered the tales of King Arthur into my own narrative, the truth of how intertwined my psyche is with King Arthur in regards to even my first book — which has nothing to do with swordfighting or adultery — was obvious.

I’m never going to be able to escape King Arthur, and I’m okay with that. Friendship, loyalty, love, and war — I’ll probably never write a book where those aren’t the central themes of my tale.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a woman who read my second novel and absolutely loved Carver Greyson. When she said his name, she clapped a hand over her heart and looked up at the sky with a huge, swoony, oh-Carver! sigh. I thought about how happy that made me, since Carver is one version of King Arthur. Mark of the Pterren is another. Except Mark of the Pterren is a far more involved retelling, probably the biggest one I will ever do. It scares me and thrills me, especially right now, as the book goes through its second round of beta-reader edits, and my rejection emails from literary agents come in. Hope springs eternal though, so even if Mark of the Pterren is a wash, and the only people brave enough to ever crack open that story are my friends and friends of my friends, I still have my next book to think of, and my next, and my next. At some point, one of them will be “it” — the one that attracts interest.

In the meantime, tomorrow — Saturday, May 2 — is my 35th birthday, and I’ll be celebrating Independent Bookstore Day at Maria’s Bookshop here in Durango. From 1-3 p.m., I’ll be hanging out with other local authors, sharing titles of my favorite books, so if you’re in town, come on by! It should be a really great day!

Anthony Doerr is this amazingly nice guy who won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction this week.

That photograph is from his author webpage. He lives in Boise, Idaho, and he’ll be attending the writers conference in Sun Valley this July.

Goodness, do I wish I was rich, so I could buy tickets to this conference and spend a bunch of time in gorgeous Sun Valley and bask in the presence of Anthony Doerr.

*maximum bliss level*

I certainly won’t be going to Sun Valley this summer, but maybe at some point, I’ll get to hear him speak.

I’ve been taking my time reading All the Light We Cannot See, which was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award, and is the novel that just won the Pulitzer. Doerr’s writing is full of poetry and verve, and though I’ve only read 40% of the book (I’m reading it on my desktop, and highlighting my favorite lines as I go), here is my favorite sentence so far —

“Swifts, flushed from chimneys, catch fire and swoop like blown sparks out over the ramparts and extinguish themselves in the sea.”

Anthony Doerr is a magician with verbs. If you want to see a pyrotechnics of action words, this book is for you. Doerr cites Cormac McCarthy as a huge influence, and certain lines in All the Light evoke McCarthy’s tense, vocabulary-rich prose, when detail is carefully rendered for objective reality so the reader may shine his/her own light into a character’s emotional depths. It’s that kind of storytelling, and the language is dazzling.

This is my favorite picture of him —

SO happy! Such a big smile!

This publisher photo is also great —

I just look at pictures of him and cheer, “Yay! Yay! YAY!!!!!”

Man, this guy makes me euphoric.

I’m only 40% finished with All the Light because I keep reading his essays. Marvelous essays that are linked to his wepage, which you can find here.

He writes on topics I LOVE reading about, namely: 1. climate change, 2. the human microbiome, 3. nature, 4. the arctic, Bora Bora, and parenthood.

I can’t wait to start reading his collections of short stories! I wish his website had a blog — I would follow and read all his past blog posts.

I wonder how many Thought Candy readers have already devoured All the Light We Cannot See? Or anything else written by Anthony Doerr? What did you think?

And if any of you are attending the writers conference in Sun Valley this summer, I am officially pine green with envy.

Last Sunday, April 5, was Easter Sunday, and my husband and I spent the evening with his daughter Missy’s family. Missy lives with her husband and their three children in a really cute house near Bayfield, about 30 minutes away, and her husband’s parents live in two houses next door. With so many family members living so close together, we always have lively get-togethers on birthdays, holidays, graduations, and other occasions.

For Easter Sunday, Missy’s mother-in-law, Connie, cooked a turkey with stuffing, and fresh bread, and Missy made brussel sprouts with bacon, and mashed potatoes, and other family members brought other dishes for a feast, and we sat around the table at Connie’s house, eating, chatting, and playing with Elly and Ember, who are 7 and (soon to turn) 2. Elly and Ember are wonderful girls, and delightful company.

The evening was completely magical, and I found myself reflecting on how, the older I get, the more and more I appreciate the time I spend with my family. Which is not to say that I ever didn’t appreciate family — either my own or my husband’s — but to say that my gratitude for my family deepens and grows as the years go by. Like friendships, positive family relationships transform over time, and there was something particularly affecting about this year’s Easter dinner.

Missy’s husband, Jeremiah, was present, which was fantastic because he was scheduled to be out of town on a job site, but in a twist of fate, he was allowed to come home that weekend instead. Missy’s aunt Sherry, uncle Bob, and cousin Michael were there, and it’s always nice to see them.

After supper was eaten, and Sherry’s family left, and a number of other family members headed back to Missy’s house, I remained at the table with Connie and Jeremiah, Elly sitting on my lap, and we sat and talked a while longer.

Then Connie went to her cupboard and removed copies of my two novels, took out a black Sharpie marker, and asked me to sign her books.

It was the first time I’ve ever signed my books for a family member, and I was deeply moved. I signed each title page, and then opened the books to the last page, which Elly signed for her grandma as well. She also wrote “I love you” in cursive, printed the date, and drew a lot of stars.

I am Elly’s step-grandma, and Connie is her biological grandma, and it felt really amazing to just be sitting there, fully present, in that moment.

It was made even more special by the fact that Connie adores my second novel, Love and Student Loans and Other Big Problems, and was simply over the moon when she read that book. We chatted about Love and Loans for a bit, too, and though it’s been some time since she read the novel, Connie’s emotions concerning the story and its characters remain really strong, and her recall of detail in the book is amazing.

I gave her a copy of The Etiquette of Wolves at Christmas time, and she is trying to read my first book, but it’s much more difficult for her. Wolves features a lot of wealthy young people in college, whereas Love and Loans stars a financially-struggling protagonist in a setting Connie could relate to and empathize with right away. Connie was profoundly interested in the details of Mary Jane’s life, her family, and her relationship with Carver, whereas Jimmy and Noelle’s evolving friendship in Wolves isn’t immediately compelling to her. Connie is determined to read the book though, and get past the beginning.

Words can’t do justice to the joy of sitting with my granddaughter on my lap on Easter, watching her sign her name and draw stars in my book, while I chatted with Connie about my work. It made me feel whole in a way I’ve never felt before. It made me feel valuable and accepted. Appreciated.

Not every writer gets to have family members who appreciate their work, and I certainly have my share of family members who are utterly scornful of what I do, and how I spend my time. I received an email full of name-calling and complete loathing from one such (distant, very distant) family member a few days ago. When a family member takes the time to write “you SUCK” and list all of your supposed faults in an email, it makes you wonder about the power of hate in the world, and why people are driven to spread so much absolute negativity, with the goal of demolishing someone else’s self-esteem.

I know that we can only share with the world what we share with ourselves, so if we are a pit of name-calling and self-loathing, that is what we will project onto others. So most often, I never respond to those kinds of attacks, because engagement only brings more of the same.

I’m grateful that my family isn’t completely populated with such individuals, and this year’s Easter Sunday was especially beautiful, peaceful and fulfilling in a way that continues to linger inside me, sustaining me through a difficult time. None of us can be loved universally by all people, and some of us have family who will never love and appreciate us, no matter what we do, but to have even one relative who loves us for who we are and what we do means a lot. It certainly means a great deal to me.

Some really amazing things have happened to me in the past two weeks. Amazing writer things.

On March 16, I finished revising my “Round Two beta draft” of Mark of the Pterren, and began submitting the new manuscript to my second wave of beta-readers for feedback.

(Beta-readers are friends, and friends-of-friends, who agree to read an unpublished manuscript and offer feedback to the writer about the book. Beta-readers are really awesome people because unpublished manuscripts are often rough, confusing to read, and chock-full of mistakes, errors that beta-readers take the time to point out for correction.)

For my Round One beta draft, which went out in late November and December, I had four readers. They were: my brother Dale, my alpha-reader (and Reading Angel) April, my childhood friend Bonnie, and my Australia-lovin’ friend Jen, who loved Mark of the Pterren so much, she found more beta-readers for me.

Starting on March 16, I began emailing the manuscript to eleven more people (three of them people Jen connected me with) — and now I wait. Wait to hear what else needs to be fixed, what plot holes I missed, what sentences and paragraphs should be deleted, what words I misspelled, what character arcs still fall flat. It takes so much work to clean up a book. The quality level I need is out of my hands at this point, because only those beautiful beta-readers can find the flaws I don’t see.

As soon as they message me or email me with the problems they find, I fix them. So I’m certainly not “done” writing Mark of the Pterren.

But I do have a lot more time on my hands now, and I’ve thrown myself back into reading. I’ve also started researching my next project, which will be a YA (Young Adult) fantasy novel. I really look forward to revising and rewriting Book II in the Pterren series (a series which will most likely be five books total), but I would also like to write something I can pay my mom’s mortgage with. Prioritizing the YA novel seems prudent.

In the past few years, more and more book sales have gone to YA, not just adult fiction sales, but adult nonfiction sales. There is simply a huge market out there hungry for YA novels, especially of the sci-fi/fantasy kind.

And that is exactly what my next project is — most of the novel takes place under the sea, and it’s a gender-reversal of The Little Mermaid —

A story in which the male teen protagonist is a merman, and the female teen protagonist is a human. The story mostly takes place under the sea (opposite to how most of The Little Mermaid takes place on land).

And, like in The Little Mermaid, one of them changes form for part of the story — in this case, my female protagonist is transformed (against her will) into a mermaid for a time —

There is a lot of magic and danger in the story, a lot of plot, because action is one of the biggest draws for the genre — the stakes are high, stuff is happening, people are swimming around being heroic and awesome — unique characters and strong plots make for compelling stories, and I want to deliver a compelling story.

This story is about more than magic and danger though. It’s about the perils of climate change, and the damage being done to the oceans. It’s about spirituality and religion, and how people navigate their own truths while honoring the values of their faith community. My female protagonist is sixteen, and being raised by a man who is not her father. This man is also one of the most wonderful characters to ever appear in my head. I spent hours this morning listening to him converse with the teenager he’s raising, and I can’t wait to let readers meet him! He is really amazing.

I feel very honored that such admirable people show up in my brain. Though sometimes, I’m not always nice to them. While I don’t normally interact with characters in past books, Mary Jane from Love and Student Loans and Other Big Problems stopped by for a visit a few weeks ago. I’ve been under so much pressure this month with possibly losing my mom’s house to foreclosure, I was pretty sarcastic to Mary Jane when she showed up. I asked, “How’s your happy ending going?” and she said, “Don’t be like that. I just came in for a milkshake.” I said, “You know nothing. I was so nice to you. I could have made your life so much harder.” I waved the most recent foreclosure notice at her. She shrugged. “Maybe you need a milkshake.”

I think the last time I had a milkshake was about two years ago. A yummy blackberry-malt that Greg bought during one of our trips to Pagosa Springs. I think this was around Easter, which is coming up soon.

But a few weeks ago, I certainly wasn’t in the mood for a milkshake. I told Mary Jane to go away, and I went back to work on Mark of the Pterren.

Normally, of all my old characters who revisit me from time to time, it’s Noelle who drops by (Jimmy Fairchild’s best friend from The Etiquette of Wolves). Sometimes when I’m driving, Noelle appears in the backseat and does Noelle-things, like texting people and fussing with her hair and making random comments.

The memory of writing a character operates much the same way as the memory of any person from life — they appear at odd times, sometimes to interact with you, sometimes just to be there. I’m fortunate that none of my antagonist-characters ever ghost me like this. Of course, my antagonists in a work in progress frequently show up so I know what to write, but not the old ones, and I’m grateful for that.

Oh, and a side note before closing — if any of my readers read my recent post about The Night Circus — please note that I was mistaken about a movie coming out this year. While I was browsing for more pictures online, I realized those movie posters were fan art! Not Hollywood creations. I went back and corrected my original post.

Thanks so much for reading! And if you have ghosties who visit you, I hope they’re the non-scary kind, like mine.

Thanks to my favorite book-clubbing partner (who is also my alpha-reader for All The Writing, great and small), I finally read The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, the powerhouse novel that took bookstores and readers by storm in 2011.

I couldn’t walk into a bookshop without seeing this novel for sale in 2011, and most of 2012. Consequently, this was an it book I resisted for a long time.

And there is so much to love in this book, it’s obvious to me now why The Night Circus became such a bestselling juggernaut.

Just looking at some of the artwork this book has inspired makes me get sentimental and swoony, and I want to read the first half of the novel all over again.

The film rights were optioned before the book was even published, and anyone who has read this novel knows how badassly beautiful The Night Circus film will be.

Just look at this fan-art movie poster. It’s a Total Badass Work of Art —

Here is another fan-created film poster — *swoon* —

And look at this gorgeous image of Celia!! —

So in sharing my book review for this novel, please understand that I feel like I failed as a reader in not being able to give The Night Circus a full five stars. It feels like my problem was that I couldn’t get out of my own way, and just be swept along in a fairy tale. Because my brain kept saying I was reading a novel, not a fairy tale, and that they should be different. (My brain really annoys me sometimes.) That said, I definitely want to see this movie!! (Whenever the movie is made!) The fan-art film posters alone make me get spazzy and insanely happy!! A movie that’s all about magic and love? YES PLEASE.

Be ready for a future post when the movie lands a cast and crew.

In the meantime, here is my review of the novel.

*****

The Night Circus begins with a beautiful premise. It’s 1873. A magician named Prospero walks backstage and discovers he has a five-year-old daughter. The child’s mother is dead. Prospero didn’t love the dead woman, and when he lays eyes on his daughter, he doesn’t love her, either. But he realizes he can use her. Train her as a tool. When she’s grown, she can compete as his proxy in a tournament with another magician in a fight to the death.

Though the reader later discovers this fight is actually “a fight till exhaustion” and doesn’t involve any kind of physical combat at all—it’s clear that the stakes are high for this girl. Her name is Celia.

Her father uses real magic, not parlor tricks with smoke and mirrors, and Celia has an incredible aptitude for using magic herself. While she learns to do astonishing and beautiful things, like change the color of fabric, and turn physical objects into birds, part of her training involves learning to heal herself. Prospero slices Celia’s fingertips open with a pocketknife, again and again, to force her to heal her cuts. When she annoys him one day, he smashes her wrist with a paperweight, and it takes her an hour to “set and heal the shards of bone.”

Prospero is a real piece of work.

His friend and fellow magician is a man named Alexander. When Prospero proposes to Alexander that they play a new game (or start a new magical tournament), with Celia fighting as Prospero’s proxy, Alexander agrees. He goes to an orphanage and selects a young boy named Marco to be his own proxy, a boy who has never known his parents at all. Alexander gives Marco magic books, sets him up in a private apartment, and tells him to get busy, he has a lot to learn before he grows up, and the tournament begins.

After Marco and Celia are grown, they discover the venue for their tournament will be a circus, a beautifully crafted circus that both of them will enchant, enhance, and infuse with their wonderful magic.

That was how The Night Circus began, and what a gorgeous beginning it was. I read the first half of this book compulsively, because it was obvious at the outset that Marco and Celia were destined to fall in love in the tale, despite being proxies in a tournament that will require one of them to die, and I was excited to see what would happen to them.

However, by the time I was halfway through the novel, I realized the book wasn’t the story of Marco and Celia. It is the story of the magical circus. The circus is the main character of the novel, and all of the wonderful “people” characters exist to tell the tale of the tournament’s venue.

So I started to feel really cheated, because the plot of the book starts falling apart halfway through, with plot holes and inconsistencies that grow and grow to extremely high levels in the final third of the book, by which point I was skipping large chunks of text and skimming for dialogue, just looking forward to being done. It didn’t help that long sections of the story were narrated through the eyes of secondary characters, a situation that became increasingly troublesome to me by the final third of the book, because I never grew as attached to the secondary characters as I did to Celia and Marco.

I really didn’t like that my emotional focus in this novel was meant to be wholly tied to the circus itself, because, while I liked the circus, the setting wasn’t why I was reading the book. I also wasn’t reading this story because I was invested in the secondary characters. I was reading for Celia and Marco. The menace and cruelty inflicted upon Celia and Marco, which made the beginning *so* exciting and wonderful to read, was completely dropped once the tournament actually began, and with the introduction of so many secondary characters — including a pair of young twins who perform with kittens, and introduce the reader to more and more adorable and whimsical parts of the circus — things instead became extremely cutesie.

The second half of the book didn’t work for me, though I admit the story works fine as a fairy tale. In fairy tales, motives and back-stories need no explanation, the plot doesn’t need to make sense, and things happen because they happen, with no reason required. But what works in a fairy tale doesn’t work for me in a novel.

I wanted the villains to have a point, or at least face a consequence or two. I wanted to have an explanation for why two powerful men would spend multiple lifetimes doing nothing more than challenging each other by proxy. I wanted to know why Prospero, a man so lacking in ethics that he would sacrifice his daughter in a pointless game, would need to peddle his powers as a magician on stage, rather than just taking money from people by force, or at least using his magic to get money without troubling himself doing shows.

The author’s attempts to soften Prospero and Alexander in the second half of the book didn’t change the fact that they destroyed people for nothing more than their own pleasure, since they had nothing to gain in the tournament. That made them even worse to me, not kinder or gentler. I also wanted to know why there weren’t more magicians in the world, if “anyone” with a bit of an aptitude for using magic can learn a magician’s skills from books. (Just think of what companies would do with this “common” knowledge, how much money they could make!!)

While much was made in the beginning about Celia learning to heal herself, this plot point had no bearing upon the story at all. Celia’s suffering during the tournament is never physical. She suffers grief, and she suffers a vague kind of ‘magician’s fatigue’ in using her magic sustaining the circus, which leads her to make strange and bizarre choices in the second half of the book that made no sense to me. I was sad that she never heals herself during the tournament, because the set-up for this plot point was wonderful.

In one strange scene, the financial backer and initiator of the circus, a wealthy man named Chandresh, suffers some kind of delusional attack in which he believes he must murder Alexander. At the circus one night, Chandresh hurls a knife at Alexander, who sees the knife coming and steps aside, and then watches the knife plunge into the chest of the man standing beside him, Herr Thiessen. Herr Thiessen is a close friend of Celia’s, and Alexander was talking to him when Chandresh threw the knife. Herr Thiessen falls and dies, and there are a few other tense events that occur simultaneously (a bonfire sputters out extra smoke and some people cough, and a kitten takes a tumble, cries out, and needs extra petting to be soothed), but other than that, life goes on at the circus that evening without further drama, despite Herr Thiessen’s sudden and tragic death. Chandresh isn’t arrested, Alexander isn’t questioned, and no one wonders why a man suddenly died with a knife through his heart. I wanted to know why Alexander, a powerful magician who can manipulate objects at will, did not stop the knife. That seemed as evil as everything else he did in the story.

But even though people die in this book, and Prospero and Alexander do dastardly things, in the end, no one is bad. The villains (Prospero, Alexander, and the accidental-murderer, Chandresh) are the three people who created the magical circus, so the reader is meant to understand they are all good guys in the end, even though they did so many diabolical things. The author kept steering the story away from the harshness of reality, into a vague and happy world where kittens jump through hoops, there’s never a shortage of caramel popcorn, and people are all good at heart, even when they are scorned, used, and betrayed. No one lashes out in this story, no one is enraged or vindictive, no one seeks justice for wrongs committed for fun. If you crave stories with magical settings, interesting characters, hazy (or nonexistent) plots, and happy endings, this story will give you intense satisfaction.

I thought the first half of this novel was a 5-star read, but the second half was so nonsensical and unenjoyable to me, I would have stopped reading. But I was book-clubbing this novel with my wonderful friend, so I finished the story by skipping all of Bailey’s stand-alone sections, and all of the remaining stand-alone circus descriptions, and skimmed other secondary character sections for dialogue. So I did technically finish this novel, and overall, because the beginning was so lovely, I give the book 3 stars. But by the second half of the novel, because the author spent so much time with a pair of cutesie twins and their kittens, rather than dealing with her plot holes, I found myself feeling aggravated every time those oh-so-cute-and-adorable twins and their kittens appeared on the page.

I really wanted to love The Night Circus, because the first half of the book was so enchanting, and Prospero and Alexander were so perfectly diabolical. But the author just didn’t follow through for me. She set up a plot that didn’t feel executed at all. But the author did find a way for the circus to live on forever, and delivered a big happy ending for every reader whose heart was tied to the circus (which is also a happy event for the human characters in the story). So this novel delivered a fairy tale thousands and thousands of readers fell in love with, and I wanted to be one of them, but I failed. Because my brain is a real jerk sometimes, and wouldn’t let go of the plot holes.

So bring on the movie!! I can’t wait to see what they do with the screenplay!! *excited!!*

I just *love* the artwork people have made for this book!! *swoon* This movie is going to be gorgeous.

Years ago, when I was in college, a fellow biology student told me it was impossible to read in a dream. This student was emphatic that reading is a conscious activity, and cannot take place in the unconscious mind. As soon as I heard this, I said, “I read in my dreams all the time.” My classmate became super belligerent, and said something like, “Then you’re not really dreaming. It’s impossible.” And I immediately thought, “Okay, I’m not going to argue.” And changed the subject.

We know so little about what takes place in the human mind (or any mind) while we dream, that people who make these kinds of blanket statements astound me. I have so many wild, vivid dreams that involve reading — and writing — that no one could ever convince me that this is impossible. Reading in your dreams is entirely possible, and I speak from a wealth of experience.

In fact, last night I dreamed I wrote a really amazing blog post, and it was so awe-inspiring that *five people* left comments on the post, and I kept reading their comments like, “Wow!!! This is AMAZING!!!” My blog page was very different from my current blog, and had a beautiful gold and brown background, and a completely different font, and this dream-post I wrote was a work of art.

It was a totally excellent dream. If you can imagine having a dream where you win the lottery and suddenly have piles of money everywhere, and start jumping around being super-happy, exclaiming about all the wonderful things you can now do with this money, that was the feeling in my dream last night. It was pure ecstasy, and it involved typing a blog post, reading and editing the post, and then reading the five reader comments on the post over and over.

I think my brain fixates on reading while sleeping because the shape of letters and words is so deeply lovely to me. In dreams, I can be writing and reading on paper, on stone, on a computer, or any other surface where text can exist.

Sometimes I leave my dreams with turns of phrase that go into a manuscript.

For example, as I was falling asleep last night, just before going under completely, my brain gave me these lines, which went into my manuscript today:

“Naveen was much more subtle than Xander, but just as frightening in his own way as the Senate Leader had been. Like the dark color of his eyes and the deep shade of his skin, he emanated deception and risk. Naveen smelled like the night air and shadow, like cold steel in the snow, and the thrill of being close to him was far more compelling than all of the danger she felt.”

That’s currently page 808 in my Microsoft Word doc. I don’t know if I’ll keep those lines, or if I’ll edit them or delete them, but they are the product of a half-dreaming state, in those flashes of nodding off before I was totally gone. I tend to remember those more than the words and ideas in deep sleep.

I’ve never had a dream that involved reading and writing that wasn’t incredibly joyful. I’ve dreamed of answering exam questions in college blue books that earned A++ scores, dreamed of writing beautiful love letters to people I’ve been in love with, dreamed of carving prayers in wooden temples built for a goddess.

I certainly have scary dreams, too. And sad dreams. Dreams where I feel guilty, ashamed, or unworthy. Dreams full of pain and longing for loved ones who’ve died. If I believe anything about dreams, it is that they are a sorting-place of emotion, where the mind is exposed and open to what is outside of us as well as within.

But you won’t ever catch me telling someone that reading in a dream is impossible. I can’t imagine ever saying anything limiting about what happens in dreams. Our minds can do anything there, whether we remember or not. Discovery, creativity, and emotion are all powerful components of dreams, and I could never take anyone seriously who spoke in a derogatory way about the abilities of the dreaming mind. Yes, dreams can be crazy, painful, and strange. They can also be wondrous and breathtaking. There is a limitless potential inside of our dreams, vast as the universe, and as full of life as the tiniest seed.

I’ve been reading and writing in dreams long before I ever called myself a writer. But then again, I do a lot of other things in dreams, too. Some inspire stories. I once dreamed I had beautiful crimson dragon wings — huge and dangerous — covered in scales and studded with jewels, and I was flying over rooftops, saving small children from burning homes. That dream was the beginning of Mark of the Pterren. Most of my dreams aren’t so noteworthy. Some leave me weeping. Some make me jump out of bed in horror. I’m glad I don’t remember them all. I’m also glad I have them, even the bad ones. My brain needs those dreams. We all do.

The much-hyped and much-discussed movie Fifty Shades of Grey came out last Friday.

Yeah. In case anyone hasn’t heard of the social media phenomenon that took Twitter by storm. As well as Twitter’s slower, but more popular pal, Facebook.

I’m so tired of the phrase Fifty Shades, I could slap myself with frozen tuna for even mentioning this movie in a blog post. But I have a confession to make. On Saturday, while a bunch of people were out watching this film, celebrating The Day of Hearts and Love, I ended up in a fight with my husband.

Not because I wanted to see the movie, or wanted him to go see the movie with me.

Nor were we discussing BDSM, or the portrayal of BDSM in Fifty Shades of Grey, or whether Christian Grey is an abusive, controlling nutwing or a true Prince Charming.

We weren’t really discussing anything relevant at all.

We were having one of our generational fights. Fifty Shades of Grey was the inspiration, but the argument was really about demographics. And also the pressing question of, What is wrong with women? (as voiced by my husband, a 60-year-old male who does not — and cannot — understand why anyone would read the novel Fifty Shades of Grey, or see the movie).

The situation that led to this fight started a week ago, when a Lego version of the movie trailer made its appearance online.

I thought this Lego Fifty Shades of Grey trailer was hilarious, and last week, when my husband stopped watching Antiques Roadshow and other wonders on PBS, and came upstairs for bed, I was like, “My lil honey!! Come watch this!! It’s so funny!!”

My husband doesn’t read fiction. He especially doesn’t read erotica. He watched this trailer with a complete look of, What the hell is this? — baffled and frustrated that he was being forced to watch some weird porny thing with Lego dolls.

There’s a scene in the trailer when Christian Grey opens the door to his BDSM room using a large silver key, and I told Greg, (while giggling hilariously), “He’s opening the door to his Red Room of Pain! That’s where he ties her up and hits her with a belt!” I burst out laughing again, and my husband left the room before the trailer ended, shaking his head in disgust, and muttering, “He has a f*cking Red Room of Pain? The f*ck??”

My husband was born in 1954, and he’s pretty old school. He views kink as a lot of guys in his generation do, as a bizarre subculture that has no place in a mainstream version of manhood.

I should also make it clear that kink isn’t my thing, either. In 2012, I read Fifty Shades of Grey, (along with a hundred million other people), and I admit I wasn’t into it. I didn’t like how Ana kept expressing she didn’t want a BDSM lifestyle, but Christian kept pushing it on her, and at the end of the book, when she was smacked with a belt and forced to call out the lashes until she broke down in tears and shock, I was in shock right along with her. I made it clear to Greg then, when the book was all over mainstream media, that BDSM was NOT my cup of tea, nor would it ever be. If any man did to me what Christian Grey does to Anastasia Steele in that novel, I would turn violent to protect myself.

Which was why it was so traumatizing for me to read the belt-whipping scene in Outlander.

The TV show will air again in April, and I’m nervous. I’ll be watching to see what they do with the belt-whipping scene in the book, but I’m really nervous as well.

However. Unlike Fifty Shades of Grey, Outlander was a book that hooked me on page one, and kept me hooked. But I initially had to skip reading the traumatizing belt-whipping scene, when Jamie beats Claire. (And this beating has nothing to do with BDSM. This beating is not about pleasure, or structured pain, or contracts, or anything else involving kink. It was a straight-up beating, and it was really brutal to witness.) Later, after I’d read 200 more pages, I went back to that scene and finished reading it, then finished the novel, and then reread the book immediately. It was something I forgave the book for, and grudgingly accepted, because I loved the book so much. That scene horrified me though, because anything with that level of violence takes me right back to my childhood, which is the opposite of being aroused.

Physical abuse is in no way sexy to me. I cannot do kink. I do not want to be tied up, blindfolded, or hit with anything. If someone forced me to participate in a BDSM lifestyle, I could only be a dom, because I would turn violent and commit murder if anyone made me a submissive.

Not that I’ve ever felt any desire for any of it. My blood runs cold when kink is involved. The rules, the safe words, the toys, the rope. The things I find arousing have nothing to do with structured rituals for pleasure and pain. And also, I’m just far too lazy. A BDSM lifestyle takes a lot of time and work. Time I’d rather spend just lying in bed naked, without suffering rope burn. Plus Greg does all kinds of sweet things for me without first hitting me with a riding crop to “earn” after-care. Like snuggling on the couch with ice cream watching movies. Greg gives me that without ever making me count aloud belt lashes. I’m spoiled. And I’m staying that way.

If the price of any man’s love was that I had to sign a BDSM contract I didn’t want to sign, I’d just stay single. Kink isn’t a price I’d ever be willing to pay.

Fortunately for me, my husband finds kink repulsive, and would never hand me a BDSM contract to sign.

But he can’t laugh about Fifty Shades of Grey, either. That’s where we run into problems.

Greg finds the book and the movie all kinds of disturbing. “Sick and disgusting” are his words.

And here is where I made a mistake on Saturday. I was washing dishes, Greg was on the downstairs computer, and he read some kind of headline about Fifty Shades of Grey dominating the weekend box office.

He was appalled. “What is going on with women in this country??? Why would they go and watch this??? Do all these women want men who beat them???”

I started laughing. And joking. “They want their own helipads and private jets. And if they have to get smacked with a belt for it, hey, small price to pay.”

Greg continued to be horrified. “There’s something wrong with this country when all these women want to be tied up and beaten!!! What the hell is wrong with people??”

I laughed harder. “At least the movie doesn’t have the tampon scene. In the book, the guy removes the girl’s tampon as like, foreplay or something–”

And this is where Greg blew up.

“Don’t talk about this anymore!!! It’s sick!!! It’s f*cking sick!!! Your whole generation is f*cking sick!!!”

I said, “Man, you don’t need to yell.”

Greg covered his head with his hands and put his face on the table. “I can’t talk about this anymore. This whole generation disgusts me.”

I said, “I’m in this generation, and I’m not watching this movie.”

Greg said, “But you made me watch that movie trailer!! You’re part of it!!”

I found this unacceptable. “Oh my God, Greg. That trailer is a parody.”

But Greg could not see the humor. “This whole thing is disgusting!! I don’t want to hear anything about this movie ever again!! EVER. AGAIN.”

I finished the dishes at that point, and headed back upstairs to work. “Fine! We won’t talk about it anymore!”

So I managed to give my husband a BDSM mental breakdown because I made him watch a porny Lego trailer and then mentioned the word tampon. Granted, I was talking about a used tampon and it was being associated with the word “foreplay” — but still. This was not an ideal Valentine’s Day. Well, not for that hour, anyway. I went back to work on Mark of the Pterren, and Greg took a chill pill.

But I haven’t mentioned the movie, or anything else related to the movie, since then. I spent the whole weekend laughing though. I pretty much binged out on the social media frenzy. On Sunday night, I crawled into bed after Greg had passed out, and just lay there and laughed and laughed. (But silently, so I wouldn’t wake him up and then have to explain why I was laughing so much.) Literary criticism and film criticism have had very barbed things to say about Fifty Shades of Grey, and I’ve enjoyed the snark because I am who I am, and the book is what it is, and the movie is what it is, and life is life.

When I read that Anastasia Steele doesn’t get to have an orgasm on screen, and that the movie caters to the male gaze, I kept busting up. It just all seemed so silly. The book was all about Ana’s pleasure, but the movie is… for men? What?

But by Monday morning, I was done with Fifty Shades stuff. My binge of reading about the film was like eating too much cotton candy, and I had to stop or suffer a bellyache. (Granted, I only read a handful of articles, but a little bit goes a long way with that movie.)

I’m grateful so much has been written about Outlander catering to the female gaze. Because that Wedding episode (#7) sure is hot. It captures everything that visual erotica hardly ever captures — which is the humanity of two people being intimate with each other. When Claire is sitting on Jamie’s lap, wearing the pearls he has given her, and he puts his arms around her, the smile on his face is so honest and knowing and tender and dead-on sexy, I just feel myself stop breathing every time I see it, staring at the screen, amazed that something So Incredibly Sexy could exist on film. Jamie’s body is amazing, but that smile and the realness of those two people together — that is what makes it truly spectacular to watch.

Greg is cool with Outlander. He digs that show. Last fall, he watched all 8 episodes with me, and he’ll watch the second 8 when they start airing in April. He likes shows with great villains, and “Black Jack” Randall is the perfect kind of bad guy for Greg. (Messed up and then some.)

As for me, I’ll be working on Mark of the Pterren, and not discussing a particular BDSM movie with my husband. I do love my hubs a whole lot, even if I cause him such grief.

I have an important confession to make.

For years, I’ve had a favorite commercial.

It was the Dairy Queen “Baby Bjorn” commercial, in which a father takes a hard kick to the stones and a headbutt because he won’t share his cheesecake blizzard with his child.

In case you’ve never seen this commercial, here it is —

The first time I ever saw “Baby Bjorn,” I laughed so hard I cried, and every time I saw the commercial air after that, I about collapsed with joy.

The Super Bowl was on Sunday, February 1, nine days ago now, and while I did watch the game, I missed the first quarter and half of the second, which meant there were a bunch of commercials I missed.

Thankfully, a number of those commercials have been playing before YouTube videos this past week, which means I finally saw the Nissan commercial, “With Dad” — which is now my favorite commercial ever.

That’s right.

*EVER*

This commercial just took the top spot — and “Baby Bjorn” has been my favorite commercial for YEARS. I never thought any commercial could possibly beat “Baby Bjorn” — but the marketing geniuses have totally scored with this one for Nissan.

“With Dad” is set to Harry Chapin’s classic song, “Cat’s in the Cradle” (1974) which is a beautiful piece of music to begin with, but coupled with these gorgeous images of family life, parenthood, and a boy’s relationship with his dad, this is simply the most exquisite artwork I’ve ever seen in a commercial, and I am so full of feels each time I watch, I just notice more and more things every time.

I know this video isn’t breaking any new ground. I recognize that it’s extremely heteronormative, contains gender stereotypes everywhere, and subverts the whole point of the song. When the ten-year-old boy in the song says, “I’m gonna be like him,” the commercial plays the line as a positive anthem, a life-affirming message, rather than a statement of tragedy.

As to the tragedy in the song — in a world where many children grow up with divorced parents, or no parents at all, the message about absent fathers in “Cat’s in the Cradle” seems very quaint, since I’d take a busy, hard-working father over a dead father, or a busy, hard-working father over a drunken homeless father. The idea that having a busy dad who doesn’t have time to play catch with you at age ten, but pays for your college, tells you, “I’m proud of you,” when you graduate, and let’s you borrow his car — that anyone would cry over this amazing good fortune, and resent their father for not spending time with them as a child, seems beyond pathetic.

And yet, the song’s message is a powerful one, deeply moving, because it’s told from the point of view of the father, and the tragedy of seeing your children as “burdens” or “distractions from work” is a very real tragedy indeed.

My dad spent the last years of his life homeless, and drowned in the river he was living beside when I was 21, so I can’t personally identify with the tragedy of this song. My father couldn’t take care of himself, couldn’t hold down a job, often didn’t bathe — even before he was homeless — so “Cat’s in the Cradle” doesn’t grip me because I think, “oh, that’s me in this song” or “oh, that sounds like my dad in this song.” Um, no. My father would need a song with completely different lyrics, a song about never having faith in yourself, never loving yourself, and never being able to find that faith or that self-love before dying. That’s the kind of tragedy my father would sing about.

So while “Cat’s in the Cradle” is very much a “first world problem” kind of song, starring a functional adult male who not only has a job, but has the means to keep his job, I’ve still always loved this piece of music, and always will. Harry Chapin is singing about regret, and we all know what regret feels like, even when we work hard to purge it out of our system. We all know that pain, and that pain fills this song.

However. The commercial isn’t focusing on the father’s pain, and there is no regret. The father in the commercial is a completely heroic figure who faces hardship to not only follow his dreams but also support his family, and while his son misses him, by the end of the video, the intense love and admiration he has for his father is obvious.

The choice in camera shots, the interplay of the music and sound effects, the way images flash in sequence to not only tell a great story but build with the lyrics — this commercial is totally genius.

The actors are all gorgeous, especially the way the dad smiles at the end. God, I love men with big smile-creases around their eyes. Being a heroic racecar-driving father with dramatically beautiful smile-creases is pretty much THE HOTTEST THING EVER.

The scenes of family life in this video also make me ache with the beauty of the human condition. I’m not a mom, I have no children, and I don’t want the life portrayed in this commercial — and yet, this identity still calls to me, especially the scene of the three of them in bed together, when the father is stroking his son’s hair — I get misty every time I see that image, it’s so absolutely perfect. Every scene in this commercial is perfect, but that particular image overwhelms me with the feels.

Which means this commercial does exactly what it’s supposed to do — it makes me want to go out and BUY A NISSAN even though I’ve never owned a Nissan and I really love my Prius.

Here’s a picture of me with Queen Elizabeth this past October —

Those mountains are northwest of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Doesn’t Queen Elizabeth look great? I love my Prius. She can’t ever rival the love I had (and still have) for my 4Runner, but I do care for her a great deal.

So now that you know why I think “With Dad” should win the prize for Best Commercial Ever, here is a link to a great interview that Song River, at CowGirlZen, did with my amazing artist friend, April Reyna. Song asked April questions about her life and how she makes art. April creates the artwork for Mark of the Pterren, and while she is no stranger to interviews, she always gives fun and interesting answers. Plus, she mentions ME in this interview — so I AM FAMOUS NOW.

Yeah, that’s right — FAMOUS.

ME.

I *rule*!!!

Plus I really, really want this bedroom. The loveliness of this reading-grotto setup full of art and natural light just makes me swoon.

Some day, I’m gonna get crafty and build this for myself.

Until then, I’ll content myself with a cup of hot chocolate.

And I’ll keep editing Mark of the Pterren. I’m down to the last 300 pages of the book to revise, and I’m feeling pretty awesome. Especially since I’m famous now. *blush*

I need a big sparkly star for my office door, so my husband can see it and think, “I’m married to someone famous! She was mentioned in a blog interview! And just look at that star on her door! Wow!”

Because that is what super stardom is all about.

So, dearest Thought Candy reader — what do you think of the commercial “With Dad”? Do you have a favorite commercial? Do tell.

A few weeks ago, I had a discussion with my local authors group, Writers and Scribblers, about writing goals.

I had come across this great article titled 20 Ways to Become a More Productive Writer by Nina Amir, so I made the article the topic of our January meeting. This list was a starting-point for an interesting conversation about not only productivity, but what success as a writer looks like.

In being a full time fiction writer right now, and reflecting on success as an author, the word “Authorpreneur” (as you can probably guess) is a mash-up of author and entrepreneur — and I think it’s a perfect word to describe what it means to be an indie author, or a writer who self-publishes their work (like me) or publishes with a small press. I like the word so much that “Being an Authorpreneur: Tips for the Business of Writing” will be the February meeting topic of Writers and Scribblers.

But back to the topic of productivity, and setting goals, and finding success. At the January meeting, I was asked, “Well, what are your goals then? What does success as a writer look like to you?”

I made the mistake of answering the first question (“Well, what are your goals then?”) — using two sentences — which became confusing, because I think the person asking the question really only wanted an answer to the second question, “What does success as a writer look like to you?” and assumed my second sentence was meant to answer that question.

So that was a bit of a fail.

Because these really are two completely different questions. The word “success” describes two things — the day-to-day accomplishment of being a writer (which you can experience every day), as well as the overall whole, the big picture of what a writer is striving for (the “big dream” you achieve once you’ve “made it”).

For me, the overall whole — or big dream — I’m striving for is to be able to support myself and my husband with my writing, and a lot of other writers have the same dream: to be able to take care of themselves while pursuing their passion.

The question, “What are your goals?” would then focus on the current stepping-stone targets the writer is aiming for to one day “hit the big dream.” (In this case, achieve financial independence with written material.)

“Goals” (in my humble opinion) are very different from “success.” A goal can’t be reached every day, but success can. Not success in the “I’ve made it” sense, but success in the day-to-day accomplishment sense.

So when I began to answer both questions by first focusing on a few of my current stepping-stone targets — that was very, very different than giving a big-picture answer of success.

Being neck-deep in beta-reader edits for Mark of the Pterren right now, I thought taking some time to reflect on my big picture and stepping-stone goals might be a productive activity, because it actually takes a bit longer to think about and describe than a one- or two-sentence answer can do any justice.

Though I should also point out the goals that lead to success are always a moving target. Because as soon as anyone reaches a goal, they automatically set another to strive for. It’s just how this game works.

To begin discussing my personal definition of success, I should say that I always keep my life purpose in mind, a statement I created with the help of watching a Tony Robbins video two years ago. The video was called “Living Your Purpose and Winning at the Game of Life” and I bookmarked the link two years ago, but the video has moved. This happens a lot with that video, so if you google the topic, you can probably find it. The video was more than an hour long, and I needed a pen and paper, and the time to pause the video several times to write out my answers, in order to come up with a personal Mission Statement.

The thing about a personal Mission Statement is that it needs to be something you can achieve every day. It’s not a goal statement. A life purpose is knowing where my deepest values are, the essence of what I am most passionate about, so that I can feel successful in life each and every day I’m alive. By living my life with a Mission Statement in mind, I know that if I die today, I die as a success. I don’t have to worry I failed.

Because believing we are failures is one of the most damaging limiting beliefs anyone can ever have. If you want to crush your desire to live, and all chance of happiness, tell yourself you’re a failure, and mission accomplished.

So here is my personal Mission Statement, which allows me to feel like a success every day (no matter what my bank account statement says or what kind of “revenue stream” I am generating) — because there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t live with this purpose in mind:

My purpose in life is to be kind, loving, and compassionate, and to serve God, myself, and others by telling stories that move people, that educate, entertain, and inspire, and to help other people be storytellers in any way that I can.

I should note that the word “God” in that sentence does not refer to an outward deity — when I say God, I mean “the energy that forms all” or “the energy that creates matter and void” or “reality” or “the whole of all.” God for me is not being used in a religious sense, and I don’t even know if “energy” or “the whole of all” qualifies as a spiritual term. I just know I try to work hard in my mind to let go of absolute concepts and embrace dualism and blended understandings in all forms — and I know that I believe in the things I perceive, but I also think my perceptions are highly untrustworthy at times, and definitely limited.

Suffice it to say that “God” can mean whatever someone wants it to mean. It’s a loaded word, but a great word, one of my favorite words, and that’s why I use it. The universe is full of all kinds of mystical and wonderful things, astonishing and amazing things, and for me, the word “God” accounts for magical awe much better than a scientific word like “energy” does.

Am I getting woo-woo enough yet?

Maybe I should go on about some more woo-wooey stuff for a while…

Or how about I just share some actual goals now. Because while it’s nice to know that I live life every day being kind and working on my writing and helping other writers, that doesn’t pay the bills, does it — I actually have to generate an income for that, and that means I have goals I strive for as an authorpreneur.

So here are some of my current goals:

1. I would like my two published books to each have 200 Amazon reviews.

2. I would like to have 5,000 people subscribe to my blog.

3. I would like to publish a literary fiction novel one day. (Meaning: a novel that is written for the sake of the prose, rather than constructed for a commercial audience. I already have the plot of this novel, and the characters, outlined. I just can’t write it yet because I have to focus on commercial fiction right now.)

4. I would like to pay off the mortgage on my mother’s house ($81,000.00) with money I make from my writing. (Instead, I’ll be getting a job soon and giving up my full time writing work in order to pay this mortgage bill every month. It’s a tough pill to swallow. I won’t dwell on this.)

5. I would like to make $2,000.00 a month from my writing. (I make $1.82 per ebook, so that means selling roughly 1,000 books per month. On the one hand, that goal is insane. On the other, it is totally reasonable. Many authors sell 12,000 books per year or more. I would like to be one of them. I currently sell between zero and two books per month. Now you totally know how much money I’ve made for the past two years. Reality can be harsh.)

6. Once I’m making $2,000.00 a month from my writing, I would like to travel to Greece, France, Fiji, Guatemala, Kiev, Prague, Israel, Turkey — I have so many places I’d like to do research in, for future books, and simply to experience these amazing places in the world.

7. I would like to never worry about ever having to work a job I don’t want to, because I can always support myself as an author.

8. I would like to self-publish Mark of the Pterren by May of this year.

9. I would like to self-publish a (much shorter) YA fantasy novel by this December. (Ha! I make myself laugh sometimes. SO much. But still. I’m going to strive to achieve this.)

That’s it! That’s my list of goals for success right now as an authorpreneur! I don’t doubt I’ll get there one day. How long it will take — well, I have no idea — but achieving those goals seems well within my means, as long as I don’t wuss out and give up. (Though working full time to pay my mom’s mortgage might be seen as wussing out — I just remind myself that I worked full time as a teacher for six years while writing the first 9 drafts of The Etiquette of Wolves. I can work full time and still be a writer, I’ve just slashed my level of productivity — so it’s not technically wussing out, it’s just slowing myself down a whole lot.)

What about you, dearest Thought Candy reader? Do you have a Mission Statement? Or a definition of success? Or a list of current goals you are working on? Do share.