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1) After nursing two kids I am far too top heavy to ride a unicycle in the circus.
2) With all the voices in my head yammering at me I have to put the ideas somewhere so they’ll shut up sometimes.
3) Writing is a great excuse to get the kids to find something else to do beside bother mommy. “Not now sweetie, see, mommy’s working.”
4) Since I live in Wisconsin, I have plenty of time indoors to find something to do to keep out of the cold.
5) You can type and drink hot chocolate one handed if you need to quite easily.
6) Being a writer, I can connect with other writers. It’s nice to know there are lots of people just as weird as I am.
7) When people used to ask what I did for a living, I said I was a mom. Now I say I’m a writer and it shuts them up quicker.
8) When you’re as opinionated as I am, its always nice to have people pay to hear what you have to say.
9) My grandmother used to say to get my head out of the clouds, that daydreaming would never get me anywhere. Ha! Showed her!
10) It keeps me from getting in hot water with the government for deviant behavior…well for now anyways.
11) Got tired of seeing no one like me in the books I read, so now I’d writing them my way.
12) ‘Cause magical creatures are just hawt and I get to spend all this time with them while I write.
13) And finally, it sets me free in ways I never dreamed possible.

She holds my hand while we walk barefoot through the grass, and then breaks free to chase a dancing butterfly. He builds his brick palace for an epic battle, but when he and I fight, it ends in a sad hug. They are my gems and my aggravation, as they stumble though the world in courage and independence. I guide them as best they will let me, and they teach me much more than I can ever express. They are my heart and soul. They are my children.

I have been wracking my brain for weeks to figure out some of the setting details for the YA series I want to do. I know I wanted there to be a magical school, but I didn’t want to fall back on the Harry Potter, or Charlie Bone feel. The one commonality in the other books I’ve read involving magical academies was that the subject was treated as a science. But I see magic in a far more spiritual aspect.

Well this morning, after a night of rather productive dreaming, I came up with the core idea. I am right now scribbling note on the visual of a magic school based on education within the Goddess traditions. The whole school would be set up that way from the elemental/directional placement of the buildings, to core ritual done in the story, to the types of classes offered the students.

Yes, the main of this story is an YA adventure, but a clear foundation with the school for a lot of the character interaction I think will add a lot to the story as well. I’m sure you can all tell how I excited I am at this revelation. How many times have we dreamed of a place like this for our kids? Well back to work! Yippie!

Well after a break to recharge my creative battery I am near ready to start back on the new book again. There is some great news for some of the other novels I have completed.

The winners of the Creatures of Darkness contest done by Stardust press have been announced and my book Bloodstained Innocence won 2nd place. This means $100 prize money and a publishing contract.

I got an email from Intaglio yesterday and the LOVE my book Ancestral Magic and are excited at the idea of publishing it. It’s not just cool that they said yes but having a publisher excited about you book is a great feeling I just don’t have words to express.

Hugs to you all and I will keep you updated.

Moondancer

Okay, the story of the morning starts of with a letter from Creatrix Books. Their first reader LOVED my book Natural Order, and they are sending it on to a second reader. Even so, they for sure want to publish the book. Now is time for the environmentally gentle confetti and the sparkling
pomegranate juice in a crystal flute right?

That’s kinda what I thought my first acceptance would be like. Thing is because of financial constraints within the publishing house, they are looking at a release date of no sooner than Spring 2009. Now I know print publishing take more time than ebooks, but that still seams a long time, over 2 years.

It leave me to wonder… should I just shut up and be happy someone liked my first novel enough to WANT to publish it? Am I just being impatient, or is two years plus a really long time to wait if I want
to establish myself in the market?

Don’t get me wrong I am thrilled to finally hear from them about it, I’m just not sure if I am being unreasonably concerned about the time, or if there might be a legitimate concern at the reason for the delay.

I talked to the publisher and Creatrix said they would not have me sign the contract for a year. They said I was welcome to shop it around more if I want. If in a year I haven’t found a publisher I thought would do my book justice, then I could sign with them at that time.

They are a small, new publisher (about 2-3 years now), but great people and were open to the high pagan spiritual content of this particular story. I haven’t seen their contract, and I know their distribution is not really high since they publisher is only a couple years old, so I’ve been considering my opinion, who else I might submit to. In the end, worse a publisher can do is say no thanks, and then in a year I return to Creatrix.

So yeah, still a reason to celebrate, but no big party until a contract is signed (after a lawyer looks at it). Getting a yes for this book, so soon after the no for the other, does feel really, really good not matter the downside in the time frame.

Moon.

BTW: that you to the nice person who sent me this quote. I just had to post it.

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt;
perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”
~Robert Hughes, Time Magazine

Well it’s happened, and even though I thought I was prepared for it, that first rejection hit me like a slap in my face. I tried to be strong as I read the email from Samhain, the tears blurring my vision. There is was, thank you for thinking of us, but here is why we cannot except your story.

You write well and your world is interesting. However, I found your description and characterization of the vampires heavy-handed. Also, when we meet Nara we get a lot of history. This is both confusing—many names are introduced—and stops the forward motion of the story.

Okay. So at least I got honest feedback, right. It could have been worse, minor fixes according one of my most hard hitting beta readers who swore to stick with me to get through this too. You see like me she really believes Worlds Collide is a great story and needs to be told.

We had hoped to make the changes and resubmit to Samhain, I emailed the editor to ask if that was possible. I got a polite response explaining with her time constraints resubmission of this story was not possible. That did present the next question. Who could I submit the novel too that would be open to the rest of the series as well?

You see the challenge with this one is the first book in the Ancient Whispers series is a lesbian romance, while some of the others may not be. The lesbian couple from this novel will be a strong guiding factor in the other novels as well, but the blossoming romance in the next two books are both people strongly connected to this couple and are both straight. So finding a publisher willing to accept both lesbian and hetro paranormal romance in the same series without expecting it to be erotica.

In the end I believe in this series, and am too stubborn to let one person’s opinion beat me. So back in the trenches I go. I‘m determined to find her (my novel) a good home still and refuse to cave under the weight of one person’s view and some simple craft type fixes. You all will see Worlds Collide available one day and I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

In June I started writing professionally. I stopped writing my fan fic and buckled down with a sink and swim attitude into novel writing. By August Natural Order was finish, 103,000 words of sweat and toil off to beta readers and the crit group. It went over surprisingly well for a first book, and I decided to name the series Daughters of the Goddess. The race of shape shifters (the Clan) I created touched me deeply, and I thought a lot about using the secondary characters in other stories as well…ooooooh the possibilities.

In August I played with ideas for different stories and by September I had begun on Ancestral Magic, book one in my Heartbeat of the Earth series. During this time I began also to work on my website and had a crazy notion on the races/culture I would deal with in my fiction, and envisioned connections to the element between them.

The Clan (fire as transformation connected to their ability to change shape), the Conclave (earth, they draw their power from the earth and work in harmony with nature), the Sacrosanct (my living vampires, creatures of life and death, so connected to the element of spirit), for water and air I have this concept of water beings suck like mermaids and sirens still working on those ideas, and for earth are my fae and godblooded stories (those also are a word in progress to be tapped into next year)

While I worked on Ancestral magic and the website, I did the final touches on Natural Order and sent it off to Creatrix Books in hope of them excepting it for contract. As a local feminist publisher with a taste for more spiritual based works, they seemed like a good match for my highly goddess spirituality and environmental based shape shifter series.

I was close to finishing Ancestral Magic when November came and I set everything aside to begin my Nanowrimo project called Worlds Collide. This is about the daughter of one of the shape shifters in Natural Order and introduces the Sacrosanct and their enemies the Bane, both living vampires in my created mythos. This was shorter than the other two books, ended up being around 60,000 word in the two and a half weeks it took to write it, but it’s fast paced and the characters came out very exciting and real. Even my pickest beta readers said the story drew them in.

I thought about submitting Worlds Collide to the Creatures of the Darkness contest I head Stardust Press was doing, but then it came to me. A story that crept in my brain and demanded I write it right then and there called Bloodstained Innocence. It deals with a man of the Clan and a Bane woman and a little girl in trouble that his goddess calls him to help. I gave into my pushy muse and in about two weeks I had that completed as well as the last several chapters of Ancestral Magic.

December became the moth of editing. With ADD and dyslexia, it’s an impossible job for me without several amazing beta readers poking me along. With ladies like Sheri M, Ev, Fran, and many others (all you will find mentioned on my dedications page under word doulas and amazing goddesses) I’d never have managed it. By late December Ancestral Magic was sent to Intaglio, Bloodstained Innocence was off to the CoD contest, and Worlds Collide had been sent to Samhain Publishing. Whew! I’ll tall you this, I hate writing synopsis and writing three in one week…iiiiicccckkk! But I did it and my babies were off into the world.

So here I am at the closing of my first year of writing professionally with four books submitted and waiting… No matter what happens come next year I think the fact I did it makes me feel very proud. In fact, I dragged and old fantasy novel I started a couple years ago and have begun on looking at ways to salvage it. It was called The Dragon Stones, but since a friend just published a book this year by that name, I changed mine to A Question of Faith.

I stared this novel and then gave up on it because I believed then that I didn’t have the talent to write a novel. Well, after 4 of them in 6 month, I think now I just wasn’t ready then. I hope to next year to finish A Question of Faith and find her a home just like the others. I’ve also begun working on a cookbook based on the fifty or so dishes mentioned in Natural order as a price for contests when they book is released.

So I may be nearing the end of a very productive writing year for me, but my darlings, I’m just building up steam for what is to come. Hang on, I get the feeling next year as going to be one crazy ride.

I’ve seen tons of misperception in the Dianic faith today tooling around the my space blogs. In case you want to know the real story about the Diainic Goddess tradition, my tradition, accourding to a Dianic High Priestess herself heres the real deal.

The Dianic Wiccan Tradition

Author: Ruth Barrett
Posted: May 7th. 2004
Times Viewed: 17,577

(Contaning exerpts from WOMEN’S RITES, WOMEN’S MYSTERIES: Creating Ritual in the Dianic Wiccan Tradition, forthcoming from AuthorHouse in Fall of 2004)

I hope here to address many of the questions asked of me over the years about what marks or distinguishes our tradition as “Dianic” from other Wiccan traditions and Goddess- centered spirituality forms. In presenting this, I am well aware that the term “Dianic” has a much less defined meaning in many communities throughout the United States and abroad. There exist great numbers of women who either self-define as Dianic, or who are defined by others as Dianic, when describing Witchcraft that is women and Goddess- centered. Most often these women have no magickal or ritual practices in common, and while Dianics generally tend to be fairly eclectic in their practice, some groups are more eclectic than others, and many do not affiliate with the Dianic tradition’s foremother, Z. Budapest, or know the her-story of the tradition she revived. All the information described here refers to the Dianic tradition that emerged from the Z. Budapest lineage of which I am clergy, and not to the McFarland Dianics of Texas that are a co-gender Wiccan tradition based in Celtic Mysteries.

The Dianic tradition is a Goddess and female-centered, earth-based, feminist denomination of the Wiccan religion revived and inspired by author and activist, Zsuzsanna Budapest in the early 1970’s. The Dianic tradition is a vibrantly creative and evolving Women’s Mystery tradition, inclusive of all women. Our practices include celebrating and honoring the physical, emotional and other life cycle passages women share by having been born female. Contemporary Dianic tradition recognizes the greater or lesser effects and influences of the dominant culture on every aspect of women’s lives. Since 1971, the Dianic movement has inspired and provided healing rituals to counter the effects of living in patriarchy, and strive to understand, deconstruct, and heal from the dominant culture wherein we live and practice our faith. We define “patriarchy” as the use of “power-over” thinking and action to oppress others, either institutionally, or within the personal sphere of our lives.

(if you wish tho view the rest of the article you can find it at http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=uswi&c=trads&id=8451

You can also buy Ruth book on rituals within the Dianic Tradition Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries by visiting
http://www.templeofdiana.org/ruthbook.htm