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By infmom, August 13, 2010 12:19 pm

My first novel, Closed Circuit, has been published in print and e-reader editions.  You can get the details here.

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By infmom, July 13, 2010 12:38 pm

Image by Marcin Wichary via Flickr

I have never been known for straightforward, logical thinking.  Just ask my family.    I failed the only programming class I ever took (although to this day I can read programs written in some languages and figure out where the problems are) and my brothers would regularly whup my butt at any game requiring an advanced-thinking strategy.  My mind doesn’t handle chess or checkers–heck, my son beat me at chess the first time we ever played.  He was nine years old.  I did not let him win.

However, I’m able to think in patterns and spatial relationships that my straightforward-thinking family members can’t handle.  No brother of mine ever beat me at 3D tic-tac-toe, although when we played the paper version I only won if I got lucky.  I’m very good at troubleshooting computer problems because I don’t expect them to behave logically and I understand when to search for less exact terms.  My husband, who made it all the way through college calculus without trouble and went to grad school in a demanding scientific field, regularly fumes at his computer because he expects it to behave in certain ways and of course it won’t.  I just wish he didn’t get so annoyed with me for coming up with the solutions.  I know; logical people don’t think illogic solves problems.  That does not make sense.

Why did I go off on this tangent today?  Because I recently discovered to my absolute astonishment that I can solve Sudoku puzzles.  The iTunes store was having a sale, and in browsing through what was available I found a free Sudoku app.  At first I wasn’t going to get it, figuring it would be hopelessly beyond my powers of reason, but then I figured what the heck, I could always delete it if I couldn’t handle it.

I tried an easy puzzle and figured it out without much difficulty and with only one or two false moves.  I did another one and another one and…. OMG I can do this!

I don’t do it logically.  I do it by seeing patterns.  I will never be a speed demon or a champ but I can do this.  I am now doing the medium-diffuculty puzzles and my average solve time is just a little slower than on the beginner ones, although I’m making a few more false moves per puzzle, usually because I’m not paying close attention to where the numbers are.  When I’m actually seeing what I’m looking at, I rarely make mistakes.

I mentioned this to my son last night and he said he wasn’t at all surprised.  Because for years now I have been playing an old DOS based logic game called Sherlock.  You’re presented with a grid and a series of graphical clues as to where various icons must go on the grid to solve the puzzle.  My husband was the first one to get involved with that game and when I saw it I didn’t think I could handle it either, but here I am, probably 20 years later and still playing it.  (If any of you might be interested in trying it, it’s still available from the programmer, Everettt Kaser, on his web site.)  I think I’m using logic to solve those puzzles, but I might not even know what real logic is.

I think once I get done with the ten medium-hard puzzles on the free Sudoku app, I’ll buy the full version so I can have lots more challenges.  Man, I feel so good about this!

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By infmom, March 22, 2010 2:18 pm

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Last night, I finished the manuscript for my first novel, Closed Circuit.  More than 20 years after I started it, and four months after I wrote its sequel.  No one ever accused me of doing things logically.    It’s not a FINISHED finished manuscript, if you know what I mean–I still have to go over it and see what still needs fixing.  And let a few trusted friends take a look at it and mark all over it.  But yeah, I got the story done, and I like what I did.

I printed it out today, since I do serious correction work best on a printed page, and gleefully went out and bought a nice binder to put it in (thank heavens for printer paper that comes already 3-hole punched!)  That will make it easier for other people to mark it up too.

Now, I’m in the process of designing the cover picture.  I don’t suppose that if I get it accepted by a publisher, they’ll keep the cover I designed, but what the hey.  I know what I want.  A combination of Photoshop and ink and I’m on my way.

Damn, I feel good!

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By infmom, March 18, 2010 9:05 pm

More than twenty years ago, I decided to try my hand at writing a romance novel.  Based on the content of the Harlequins I’d read (especially one flamingly ridiculous little number called Romance of The Rose) I figured, how hard can it be?

And in truth, if you can write, and tell a story, and format your story to fit within very rigid guidelines and follow the
formula, writing a standard issue romance novel isn’t that hard.  I know, because I did it.

The problem was, when I got done with it, I knew it was not the book I wanted to write.  The story wasn’t just about these two people finding each other again after all those years.  There were other people involved, and a backstory that needed to be told, and plot points that would not fit the standard mold at all.  Besides, in those days, romance characters had names like Blaise and Chanterelle.  From the start, I chose deliberately plain names for my main characters.  Well, that part wouldn’t have gotten my manuscript binned by the romance publishers, but not following the formula definitely would have–and this story rejected the formula with as firm a hand as a Harlequin editor would have.

So I set the manuscript aside for a while, and thought about it, and worked out another storyline that had to be woven in with the original, and brought in some new characters.  And started rewriting, till I came to a stopping point for some reason or other.  And there the manuscript sat.  I’d pull up the files from time to time and look at them.  I think I rewrote the first two chapters about five times each, but somehow I never got moving on the rest of the book.

I knew from the get-go that there had to be a second book that would tie up loose ends for some of the secondary characters in the first book.  I even knew the name of the second book and the name of the new character I’d bring into the small town I’d created.  Yeah, I knew all that, but I didn’t have the story beyond a very vague idea that we’d find out who the father of 10-year-old twins was, and who would complicate their mother’s life.  But last November, I decided to get off my literary duff and by golly write that sequel.  And I did.

So then I had a finished sequel to an unfinished first book.  And when I asked a few people to read my second novel, of course there were references to plot points from the first book that didn’t really make much sense because of course the first book wasn’t to the point of being readable by anyone else, yet.

So, a few weeks ago I dug in my heels and dug out that manuscript.  Looked at the dates on the files.  They were created in DOS Word, which I had to give up due to Y2K issues (pity, because it’s my all time favorite word processor).  None of the file dates were more recent than about 1994.  Shame on me.  (When I was cleaning up a pile of old floppy disks I found a version of the book from 1990… so yeah, twenty long years.)

So, I imported the whole mess into Word 2003, cleaned it up a bit, and exported it again so I could work on it with Scrivener on the Mac (my new all time favorite word processor).  And I started plugging away at it.  It was immediately apparent where I’d left off with the rewrite, because after a bunch of reasonably good chapters, all of a sudden I had a whole chapter that didn’t do anything, the subplot and new characters went away, and the main characters reverted to standard-romance mode.  Yuck.

I decided to at least go through to the end and tighten up what was there and put it more in line with the new storyline, and that job was finished two days ago.  Now, I need to get rid of that nowhere chapter, put in a new one that advances the new plot, and move along from there.

Bits and pieces of the backstory keep impinging on my consciousness from time to time, though.  Today, I edited some of the early chapters to bring that all in, in a natural way (if I do say so myself).  When I finished that, I was ready to dance on air.  Because all of a sudden I realized…  I LIKE this book.  If I hadn’t written it, I’d read it.  What a feeling!

No idea what I will do when it’s all finished.  Send it out?  Publish it myself?  Lots to think about.  But I do think it’s a good book, and thank goodness I wrote such a lousy romance novel and gave myself the chance to write something better–given enough time.

photo credit: dasjabbadas

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By infmom, January 5, 2010 11:10 pm

I keep telling myself I need to update more.  That’s one thing I’m going to work on this year, for sure.

So, like a lot of people, I resolved to do better on diet and exercise this year.  I got a little gizmo called a FitBit to help me with that.  It uses the same technology as a Wii controller and tells me in no uncertain terms how sedentary I am during the course of the average day.

So I have decided to change that.  Granted, it’s only been two days, but I’ve done OK.  I’ve gone walking in Griffith Park because I’m so freakin’ bored with our neighborhood that I don’t want to walk in it any more (after 15 years, yeah, you get burnt out).  For now I’m walking the same stretch of roadway that the December light show is on, a distance of about two miles round trip.  But there are a lot more walking trails to check out and I can see covering many miles before I get bored.

In a few months I am going to build myself a new computer.  This one’s at least six years old (I can’t remember exactly when I built it but I believe it was in 2004).  It still works fine, but it’s showing its age.  I’ll have to buy a new motherboard and CPU, new memory and new hard drives.  I’m already deciding which of my current software will make the transfer and which I won’t bother to reinstall.  I’m looking forward to the project.  I like building computers.

I need to do some serious work on my web sites and I think I should look around for different website software.  I have been happy with NetObjects Fusion, but I think the structure is more complicated than it should be and let’s face it, the templates it comes with are dull.  I am not yet to the stage where I can design the whole look of a site from scratch, though, so I need templates for the time being.   I’m looking around to see what the options are.

In November, I wrote a novel for National Novel Writing Month.  I am proud of that.  The book is a sequel to a novel I’ve been pecking away at for more years than I really care to admit.  My goal for the first quarter of this year is to finish that first novel, edit both books to make them a reasonable length, and then try sending them out for publication.  Or perhaps go the self-publish route.  There are a lot of ways to go about getting published, these days, and I figure I have piddled around way too long.  Being able to write a 55,000 word book in less than one month showed me in no uncertain terms that I can do this and I should be getting my fanny in gear and doing it.  Besides, then I’ll have the fun of telling people to treat me right or they’ll end up in my next novel. 

Even though it’s only four days in, 2010 is off to a good start.

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By infmom, November 14, 2009 5:13 pm

My parents, and my husband’s parents, grew up during the Depression, but they had vastly different experiences with it. While my inlaws were carefully taught to be frugal, to take care of their things, to not waste food, and never to get rid of something that was still good, my parents were insulated from all that. My father’s parents were wealthy, and while my grandmother went through a lot of hardships, my mother was tucked away at boarding school where everything they felt she needed was supplied.

Thus, my inlaws lived frugally, were as self-sufficient as possible and taught their kids that wasting food and throwing things out that were still good was something akin to a capital offense.  My parents were lah-di-dah about it all, and if things broke, they had no idea how to fix them, and were more likely to just go buy another one.  They also threw other people’s stuff out without a second thought if it got in their way. And it never would have occured to them to buy anything second hand.

When my husband and I married, our parents’ styles didn’t affect us as much as one might think.  For one thing, I was tired of my parents’ needless helplessness and utter cluelessness about money, and there was never a chance in the world I would follow in their footsteps.  I always assumed I could fix things, and I did all the kitchen stuff my mother wasn’t interested in, like baking and making jelly and so forth.

However, the business of “still good” and “don’t waste food” was a bone of contention.  I was not a member of the Clean Plate Club, and I saw no harm in disposing of food that was past its prime.  I didn’t just pick the moldy part off the bread or the cheese and eat the rest.  And while I was as frugal as possible (our financial situation dictated nothing less) I was not a fan of cobbling things together and making do.  When you’re as broke as we were, you do a lot of that, but there’s nothing that says you have to like it.

As time has gone by, and our lives have gotten steadily better,  I’ve been more and more adamant about not cobbling-together, and doing things right the first time.  I saw a book title that was appropriate:  If You Haven’t Got the Time to Do It Right, When Will You Find the Time to Do It Over? And yes, I sometimes toss out, or give away, things that are still good.  We donate bags and bags of books to the library and clothing and household items to the Salvation Army every year.  This satisfies my husband, because it means the items have a chance to be useful for someone else.

What got me going on this today?  Well, one of the things I am taking time to do right is fixing a longstanding problem in our kitchen.  When we moved in here, there was a battered, broken, stained, rotten looking ceramic soap dish (or more properly what was left of it) set into the tile backsplash in the kitchen.  I talked for years about knocking it out and replacing it with decorative tiles.  Even bought the tiles when we were on vacation in Arizona two years ago.  A few weeks ago, my husband dealt with the remains of the soap dish, and I installed my decorative tiles.  The only thing left to do on that project was to remove the ghastly, crumbling caulk around the sink (something else we should have done years ago).

My husband brought home a tube of name brand kitchen/bath silicone sealant that he’d scrounged from somewhere a week or two ago, with the idea of using it to caulk the sink.  Today, since he’s away for a training meeting all weekend and I have the chance to do the work on the sink my way (let’s just say our repair-work styles are mutually incompatible; I’ll talk about that some other day) I got at it with a razor knife and a screwdriver and scraped the last of that godawful old caulk out of there and left it to dry for an hour or so.

And then I picked up the scrounged tube of sealant.  There was an expiration date stamped faintly into the crimp at the end of the tube.  USE BEFORE 04/03, it said.

I got some more at Home Depot.

photo credit: van swearingen

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By infmom, October 24, 2009 8:38 pm

Our house was built in 1930 and has been only minimally remodeled since then.  In most cases, this is a good thing, given the fact that one idiot former owner took out the beautiful original wood framed windows and put in cheap aluminum framed jalousie windows, all of which are now falling apart.

But the kitchen is still pretty much original.  And in 1930, kitchen usage was a whole lot different from what it is today.  Looking at the size of our kitchen it’s obvious only one person was expected to work in at at a time, and of course the dishwashers were all humans.  There’s no way to install a dishwasher in there, because the counter is a different height from what we have today, and putting in a dishwasher would mean destroying one of the only two lower cupboards in the room.

Next to the kitchen is a very small room that we use as a laundry room and pantry.  I’m not sure what the purpose of that room was, originally.  It seems to have been set up so that people could walk into it from the outside, but be stopped from going further into the house by interior doors that locked from the house side.  I think the water heater was in there at one time, and there’s an electrical box that’s no longer being used.  The space is just large enough for our washer and dryer, some Elfa shelves and a bit of floor space.

It occurred to us a while back that if we got a stacking washer and dryer, we would then have room to put in a dishwasher.  We were figuring on buying a regular dishwasher, because they’re less expensive, and putting it in an enclosure from IKEA.  But we just hadn’t seen the washer/dryer stack we wanted to buy at a price we wanted to pay.

Last weekend in one of those “aha!” moments we spotted the perfect washer and dryer on sale at Orchard (which is owned by Sears).  Instead of being an all-in-one unit it was two separate front loading units.  And while we were talking about the purchase with the saleslady, I mentioned why I wanted stacking units and she pointed to a Kenmore portable dishwasher that was a floor model being sold for almost half price.  She offered to cut the price even more and I said “Sold.”

So, now we have a dishwasher for the first time ever in this house.  I’m sure the joy of letting the machine do the dishes will fade, eventually, but for now we’re all eager to run it and the amount of unoccupied counter space in the kitchen is downright unreal.

Tomorrow the new washer and dryer are being delivered, which means I better go get busy cleaning up the space where they’re going to go.  You know how it is, wanting to have the place not embarrass you in front of the delivery people. 

Oh, and we can now efficiently unclutter that whole space, too, and put things away on the shelves that were always blocked by the washing machine before.  Good thing I got the new book from Erin Doland on order:   Unclutter Your Life in One Week !
photo credit: tranchis

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By infmom, February 12, 2009 1:44 pm

I’ve been using NetObjects Fusion since I got a copy free with my web hosting package.  It’s not as well known as other website-design software, but I found it easy to use once I RTFM’d enough to figure out some (to me) illogical command quirks.  One of the big minuses, as far as I am concerned, is that they don’t appear to offer a printed manual.  (They used to; it was an extra-cost option, but I don’t see a link for that on the web site any more.)

For the first version I had, I went to the extent (and expense) of printing out the PDF that came on the disk.  (I happen to prefer printed manuals; they are a lot easier for me to use than online help or Windows Help or a PDF.  But then I grew up in an age where we learned early on how to use an index. )  I didn’t want to use up that much toner and paper for subsequent program upgrades so it was back to the PDF method or looking up stuff in the previous version’s printout and hoping they hadn’t changed anything.

Thus I was really happy to see Amazon offering How To Do Everything With NetObjets Fusion 11. When I first spotted it, it was only available for pre-order, but I had a Christmas-gift Amazon gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket so I thought whoo hoo, let me order this.

The book arrived two days ago, and, speed reader that I am, I have already finished reading it and using my little flags from my special monogrammed Levengers flag wallet (a much appreciated gift from my husband) to mark places of interest.

Know what disappointed me?  There wasn’t all that much in the book I didn’t already know!  Ordinarily, I am determined to read everything I can get my hands on about any new software package so I don’t have to sit there trying to figure everything out when I run it.  Since NetObjects denied me that pleasure by sticking with PDFs and online tutorials, I just had to poke around in the software till I figured out how stuff worked.

And, of course, since my web site is embarrassingly simple, the fancy commands I didn’t know how to use yet were ones I hadn’t had to use yet.  Score one for the novice web page designer.  

Don’t let this give you the impression I didn’t like the book, though!  It’s great to finally have a printed user manual that’s well written and easy to understand.  Now I can just park the book in front of me as I experiment with web site construction.

I think eventually I need to design my own site from scratch rather tuan using a template.  Onward and upward.

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By infmom, December 29, 2008 2:14 pm

Image by outlier* via Flickr

Years ago when my kids were in grade school, the annual vocal-music concerts used to have pretty much the same songs every year.  And one of them was “Happiness” from “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”  (trivia fact o’ the day: F’zer and I saw that in its initial run in New York, with Gary Burghoff as Charlie Brown)

One year, the music director took pictures of various kids for a slideshow to accompany that song.  Vengeant was pictured with “two kinds of ice cream.”  I don’t remember if we were given a copy of that picture.  If we were, I can’t find it.  But it doesn’t matter because I remember it quite clearly.

My grandmother the medicine woman always used to ask people to count their blessings every day–especially people who were feeling blue and unloved.  Do you have a place to live?  Do you have food? Do you have enough clothes?  Do you have family and friends?  Are you healthy?  Did you learn new things this year?

Blessings don’t have to be tangible, and too often we forget how good life really is, in the face of Bad Things Happening.

Well, this year, a few Bad Things did happen.  My mom died.  But the blessing was that she never knew how sick she was.  And the outpouring of love and good memories at her memorial service was amazing.  People with only the most distant connection to the family took the time to show up and pay their respects.

Beyond that, though, I feel like I really do have “two kinds of ice cream” this year.  I’m healthier than I have been in years.  My blood pressure is normal for the first time in 20+ years, and my diabetes is finally under control.  F’zer and I celebrated our 36th anniversary in September.  My kids are happy and healthy and everyone in the family has a job.  We have our house and enough money to live on.  I got to spend time with all my brothers and their families this year for the first time in ages.  I went to my 40th high school reunion and had a great time with people with whom I’ve been friends for over 40 years.  Several of them asked me to move back to town.

F’zer and I are getting to spend more time together for the first time since I can’t remember when.  He can take days off and we can go do things, and as time goes by we’re finding more of those “things” to do.  I have a flexible schedule, so we don’t have to look too hard to find a time when we can be out and about together.  If you’ve ever lived in a situation where there was absolutely no flexibility about work, you know what a blessing this is.

I took some college classes and learned a lot of new skills that I had been interested in learning for a long time.  I have read an average of five books a week all year long, both fiction and nonfiction.  F’zer and I have gone places locally that I had never gone before, even after close to 25 years in the LA Megalopolis.

I recently got rid of the very last remnants of the last bad times in my life.  I burned some sage, as my grandmother had me do, to clear the last of the evil from the house.

From now I can only say, with joy, onward and upward!

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By infmom, August 27, 2008 1:09 pm

Last night I finally got around to watching the most recent episode of “American Chopper.” They made a bike for a company called McCuff. Now, most of the time OCC makes a bike for someone it’s either a company I never heard of, or a company that only minimally impinges on my consciousness.

McCuff, though, I am way ahead of the game!

I read an ad for their product in a motorcycle magazine when I was still working at the library, and when my daughter was still living in Irvine–so, that’s prior to June 2004. At that time, the company that made the McCuff had an address not far from where my daughter lived. So, besides the fact that it looked like a very practical product and ideal for a scooter riding klutz like me, it was kind of a home town deal. So I bought one.

What’s a McCuff? A little yellow donut shaped piece of rubber that keeps you from pouring gasoline all over your scooter or motorcycle when you fill the tank. That may not mean much to the average person, but believe me, I poured enough gas on the Vespa to make this the purchase of a lifetime.

If you want one, you can get it here.

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