LTUE Bound...

 Heading out to LTUE today and probably part of tomorrow, hoping to network a little, meet a bunch of new people, pass out some cards and bookmarks, that kind of thing.

I made up some bookmarks to tease the new book, so we'll see how that goes. 

Revisions languish, but I think I still have a sightline to get them back to Lanternfish by the end of this long weekend...

Buenas suertes!

Revisions and more

I have successfully dived into revisions and am having a great time. No really, I know everything I say sounds a little bit sarcastic...it's the family curse.

But yes, revisions are proceeding apace, and I hope to have them done and back in the editor's hands by "mid February" as agreed. By which I mean, before the end of the middle third of February, which I calculate to be 4:00PM on the 19th.

Also, I designed and ordered prints of a promotional bookmark to pass around at LTUE next week. Trying a new online printing service - I'll report how it looks once it gets here..... 

Revisionating, Take One

 This is a blog post about not yet having started working on revisions.

At least not in any concrete sense. I seem to spend some time internalizing the editor's notes before I dive in. My editor's name is Christine. We worked together on the previous book, and now we're working on this new one. 

<<Interruption to break up a fight among the cats>>

Here are the challenges to jumping into revisionating:

1 - finding more than five minutes of uninterrupted time to focus on it. Revisions take the same amount of focus as any other draft. More, in a way, because we're smoothing out lumps in the tone, and filling little plot holes with putty and Plot Spackle (tm). Which means one has to - in a matter of speaking - hold the whole work in one's mind, the entire construct hovering over the work of the moment like a big circus tent while one tries to get the littlest dancing poodle to wag it's little tail just the right way. That takes a minute, at least for me. I need to sit with the manuscript for a bit so the whole thing is sitting in RAM like a movie I've watched a dozen times. 

2 - getting past the pouty response to anyone finding anything at all wrong with the manuscript, because I worked REALLY HARD on it, and not only is it just fine the way it is, but I'm kind of sick of it and don't want to think about it any more. That feeling only lasts a few moments, and I'm getting better and breathing past it, but it never really goes away. At least not yet. 

3 - fear of messing it up because I'm nowhere near as smart or creative as I was when I finished the draft a few months ago. I actually really enjoy the collaborative process of turning a manuscript into a book, and I'm definitely the amateur in the room when it comes to making an actual book happen. 

4 - Also, I keep getting distracted by the vision board I put up for the next project. Gonna have to take that down...

So with that all said, and having used this very post to distract myself some more, I guess I'll get going.

What did we learn?

I don't know...three cats is too many...

This is a Blog Post About the Journey from Acceptance to Release

 Hi there!

Frequent readers of this blog (of which there are zero) will note that there are no meaningful posts. As with most things I start, I started this blog and then promptly discovered I didn't know what to do with it and had nothing to say.

So, since no one sees it anyway, I figure it's as good a place as any to document the process of moving from acceptance to release of the new book (see below). 

Seeing the title, it sort of sounds like dealing with a terminal disease, and surrendering to one's fate with grace. I guess it is a little like that...

Anyway, with this project, I'm making a concerted effort to be involved in marketing and promotion for the book, and I have no idea what I'm doing, so I'm going to track it here so I know what not to do next time.

Yesterday, after resuscitating this blog, I made a LinkTree and put some stuff on it. I've also been drafting a bookmark to promote the book, with the plan of taking them to LTUE in a couple weeks and slipping them into people bags while they're not looking. That draft is currently with Feliza, the publicity director at Lanternfish for her feedback and approval of the copy and whatnot.

I have to say, I really am excited to be working with the Lanternfish team again - The first time around was such a great experience that I feel profoundly fortunate to be returning. Before the first book, I had no idea what a collaborative process creating a finished book is. I dig me some collaboration! I've got revision notes from the editor (Christine, she of unlimited perspicacity) and am working through those with an aim to get them done by "mid February." And by working through them I mean I've read them all over twice and am now letting them stew in my semi-consciousness for a few days (which is how I do all my writing). (Yes, I know it LOOKS like procrastination, but it's STEW. Stew takes time. Ask your grandma.)

 Hello!

I am thrilled to share that Lanternfish Press has picked up my new book, "The Girl Who Made a Mouse from her Grandfather's Whiskers." They published my first book, and I couldn't be more excited to be working with them again.

Here's a picture!

You can check out the full press release here (not a real link)

        www.lanternfishpress.com/news/2025/1/27/acquisition-gordon

or by clicking the link to the left, over there >>>>

While you're there, check out the rest of Lanternfish's catalog.

Peace!

Soundbite #1

"We have met Big Brother and he is us."
-Commodore Perry
-George Orwell
-Pogo

Second Amendment Thoughts

As a writer, I like to examine issues from a holistic human perspective, as opposed to taking a stand on one side or the other. It’s fun, and sometimes everyone gets mad at me. For example…

 The interesting thing about the Second Amendment is the moral weight it gives to gun ownership.  By listing it alongside freedom of speech and religion, security against abuse of power by the government, and other protections for the individual, guns are elevated from being a simple tool to being a representative agent for those protections.  It therefore has the same moral weight as religion or speech, and is embedded the same way in people’s personal sense of identity, both as individuals, and as Americans.

Some interesting questions: what if the Second Amendment instead protected a person’s right to protect himself and his home by not unreasonably restricting his actions or methods?  That is, what if the need for a militia and for personal security was guaranteed without specific mention of firearms?  The first amendment ensures freedom of “the press” and we assume this means the institution of journalism, not the physical ownership of a printing press.  Freedom of speech has not suffered from this.  Would gun ownership culture have evolved differently?

Guns are tools; physical devices designed to perform a function when operated by the user.  Some are designed for killing animals.  Most are designed for injuring or killing people.  By stating one’s right to own a gun, one is essentially asserting one’s right to have the ability to injure or kill a person.

It is worth examining this at both a collective and individual level.  Collectively, why do we acknowledge and defend that right?  Because the right to kill is as inalienable as the right to the pursuit of happiness. We are never far from the law of the jungle. A well-ordered society offers institutional protections for the weak against the powerful, but societies face threats to order from within and from without. The demonstrated support of the right to kill is in place partly as a deterrent against these threats, and partly as a defense against society’s collapse, whether at a local or global scale.

Individually, the question is much more subtle, and there can be no one answer.  Each person - gun owner or no - should carefully examine his or her position, and reasons for their choice to own or not to own.  But hardly anyone will.  People don’t.  The gun is such a potent symbol of individual and collective power in America that most people on all sides of the question cling to their position on the issue as a proxy for the gun itself, which is in turn a fetish for the phallic power they crave.  That is to say, “My identity as a gun-owner/non-owner is my badge of power that represents my connection to the symbol of power with which I have aligned myself.”

But where is the real power in this dynamic?  To find the power, follow the path of who gets what they want.  Does your individual gun-ownership status get you what you want?  If so, then the power is yours.  Do you perceive threats to your power? From where do those threats come?

We can discuss the gun as the symbol of American phallic power at another time.  If the gun is that symbol in America, what fills that niche in other places?