5:40 AM  I am awake for no reason that I know. I try to decide whether I’m awake for the day, or if I can catch a bit of sleep. If I get up now, I could work for more than an hour on my book before breakfast. I go back to sleep.

7:00 AM I get up for reals. There is not much for me to do. My program of planned obsolescence is nearly complete. The Adolescent is nudged from his slumber. The husband has already made toast. I do not know this, but there are only four pieces of toast left. The Boy eats none of them. I eat three. My husband accuses me of eating his breakfast. “Sorry,” I say, munching. I reload the dishwasher and feed the dogs while the Husband ferries the Boy to school. Courage has a burgeoning hotspot on his paw, so I medicate him and fit him with The Boot of Shame. He is unappreciative.

8:00 AM So many emails. Things have gone wrong with one of my feature articles. I was to interview five experts, and finished my article by today, Jan. 31. But my experts have been slippery. They have been unreachable and unresponsive and unavailable and in one case inconsiderate. I ping everything that needs pinging, and waste some time on Livejournal and Twitter and Facebook. I know I shouldn’t, but I do.

9:00 AM Time to work on my novel, but there are many distractions. The internet beckons. (Why don’t I just turn it off?) Two cats have stopped by my keyboard demanding attention. I get about 300 words written before it is magically–

10:00 AM Morning meeting. It’s a slow news day. We chew each piece of it like bones from last night’s feast. An issue is planned from the meager scraps we have. My assignment is to work on an evergreen story that we keep going on the back burner for just such an occasion.

10:30 AM I have an interview appointment with one of my wayward experts. I had an interview scheduled with him yesterday at the same time, but he never answered his phone. I am proud that I have figured out how to convert the Belgian ’00′ number to an intercontinental ’011′ number. I have specialized knowledge! Sadly, my specialized knowledge avails me none. Again my expert does not answer his phone. At 10:45, I declare defeat. He is traveling, and it is very hard to catch people when they’re traveling.

11:00 AM I am writing my evergreen story. I did the interview more than a month ago. It is not fresh in my mind. I go over my notes trying to recapture the thread of the story. I need a headline and a lede, but everything I think of is lame.

11:45 Change of plan. A new story came in over the wire, and it’s mine. Time to shift gears. I have just thought of a lede for the evergreen story I was working on. My brain, once reluctant, has now captured the thread, but I have to let go of it again. Tomorrow, maybe.

12:15 I dial in for a teleconference for the new story. A new drug has been approved. First disease-modifying drug for a terrible disease: cystic fibrosis. There’s a catch. There’s always a catch. It will only help 4 percent of patients, and it will only improve their symptoms 10 percent. Still, not bad. I have a question, so, greatly daring, I press *1 to ask it when Q and A opens.

1:00 PM I have listened to 500 people ask questions ahead of me, but my name never came up. How fast must people punch *1 that I was 501 in line? Oh, well. I email my question and get on with my work. I hastily compose a headline and first paragraph to send to the editor as a teaser. Then I find my husband in the dining room. “I need to get out of here,” I say.

1:30 PM We have lunch at a nearby deli. I tell him I have suddenly realized I am a terrible writer and will never amount to anything. He talks me out of it. I eat a sandwich and a pickle and some Fritos and Diet Coke. I feel better.

2:15 PM How did it get to be so late? Now I have to finish the article and get it turned in by 4. I start typing. I have new headphones, so I listen to some music. They are wireless, and I discover I can go to the bathroom without taking them off.

3:45 PM I proof my article and turn it in. 932 words.

4:00 PM My other editor sends me a new list of experts to contact, to replace the ones that were unresponsive and unavailable and in one case inconsiderate. I make calls and send emails.

4:15 PM Glen is home from school and we all walk the dogs. The weather is unseasonably warm and the dogs are grateful.

4:45 PM I remember that it is Jan. 31, and I must invoice. So I invoice.

5:00 PM I have only written 300 words on my novel today. I am in the home stretch and am starting to think I might die of frustration if I can’t finish it soon. I scold myself that I must stay in my chair, at my workstation, until I have written 1000 words. I attempt to dodge my own ultimatum by surfing the web, but the web sucks. I despair because I don’t know what happens next, so I lay down on the floor. Athena the Kitten wonders why I am on the floor. Am I dead? She carefully and thoroughly licks the bridge of my nose. Then my eyelid. I am resentful of my novel and disappointed in my skill as a novelist. If I were any good, I would know what happens next. Then, very gradually, I realize I do. I get up and sit in my chair and write until I have 1240 words.

6:00 PM I emerge and dinner is ready. It is baked spaghetti, made from leftovers of a previous spaghetti meal. That’s fine with me. A glass of wine appears. I drink it. We eat and talk. I am behind on the reading I committed to in order to nominate for the Nebula and Hugo awards, so I dutifully sit and read on my Nook. I start one story after another, and quit, dissatisfied, until I find one that draws me in. My husband is reading, too. He has his laptop and is reading my novel. The same one I am working on. He has read 40,000 words in one day. I take that as a good sign. I drink another glass of wine.

8:00 PM The day is finally over. I think. I will watch some TV and think about the taxes and the bills I should have paid today. (It is the 31st, isn’t it?) There is laundry to fold and the cat boxes are dirty again. In the kitchen, someone is apparently making brownies. By 10 PM, if all goes well, I will be in bed.

I had my first rolfing session of the series of ten today. I’m glad I went out of my way to see a female rolfer, as I think the added discomfort of hanging out in my underwear with a strange man would have put things over the top on the discomfort scale.

My biggest physical complaint is my feet. I explained to the rolfer that I have excessive foot pain, particularly when I walk on concrete surfaces, that has actually become limiting. I’ve given serious thought to using the scooters in big, concrete-floored places like Meijer. And that sucks. The reason for it is something to do with having flat feet, but also more than that. (I have already done the custom orthotics thing.) My feet are a mess.

I also told her I have tightness in my upper back from working on a computer all day, which she commented on when she got to that part of me. We went over my medical history. She particularly wanted to know about surgeries/accidents. She was somewhat appalled by my jaw surgery, particularly the work they did on the upper palate. I guess that’s a special spot to rolfers and they don’t like seeing it messed up. (She agreed with me, by the way, about the necessity of the surgery and the good results.) We also talked a bit about my son’s delivery.

Then she took some pictures of me front, back, and side. Probably my least favorite part of the whole thing. I wish I were the kind of person who could share them on the internet. But no.

This rolfer has a cat who owns the rolfing table. (A large, low table padded with foam and covered with a sheet.) I thought the cat would be shooed away, but to my delight, she stayed through the whole thing. The rolfer would pick her up and resettle her if she was in my way.

The first session opens up the rib area and sides of the body. She used her fingers to poke at stuff in my ribs front and back, and worked up the sternum and into the shoulder and upper arm area. It started out not painful at all, but I had a lot of tenderness in the upper sternum, shoulders, and arms. The only time I asked her to back off was when she was working on my upper right bicep.

Most of it feels like having your muscles separated and sort of smoothed out. Some of it feels very strange, like someone is sticking their finger deep into your body, and manipulating a thing, and your brain is going, “What is that thing? I have a thing? My THING! You found my THING!”

I felt a lot of relaxation in the areas after she worked them, but some of it was relief that she was done.

One of the most surprisingly painful things she did was running her forearm down my leg. I say to you, that I could do this to you with all of my weight and effort and you wouldn’t feel a thing. There is some special skill to making it so intense. When she did it, it felt sort of like she had magically detached my leg muscles and was slowly running them through a wringer washer.

I was able to talk and breathe comfortably through it all, and like I said I only asked her to stop once, so not horrible. And through it all Rolfing Helper Kitty was my buddy. There was also a Rolfing Helper Dog whose job was to take a nap in the corner of the room.

Afterward, there was no immediate dramatic result like with my husband, but I didn’t come in with a major body imbalance like he did. I felt a bit lighter walking around, but I also felt sort of like I’d been worked over with a rubber hose, so that didn’t tell me much. She took pictures again. After some difficulty printing out, we looked at them, and she did point out one big change, at least. In the side view, my tummy was pulled in noticeably in the second photo series. The session had lifted my torso and, apparently, narrowed my waist.

I’ve been very tired today, as if I’d just had a huge workout. Like my husband, I am feeling aches in body areas that she didn’t touch. Walking is different, as if my normal way of walking no longer works and I need to figure out a new way to walk. My shoes don’t feel right.

 

This challenge for February by Mary Robinette Kowal is charming. I am very tempted, but I think I need to stay focused on finishing my novel. It’s gone way over the schedule I originally set for it, and I am close to the end. I feel like I am walking a tight rope and if I look away I’ll fall. Taking up a project, even one as simple as scribbling a postcard a day, would be looking away.

However, if you write to me, I promise I’ll write back. I love postal mail and at one time was a prolific pen pal-er. Drop me an email for my postal address (cathshaffer at gmail), or look me up in the SFWA directory. (If you have a paper one. The online version doesn’t seem to have postal or phone contact info, much to my bafflement. Never mind, I have no idea why I was having trouble with it before.)

Have fun writing letters, everyone.

I got a lot of laughs and encouragement pitching my novel-in-progress to various people at Confusion, and I realized I couldn’t think of any good reason not to share it publicly with all five of my blog readers. I did think of a bad reason, which is that you might steal it from me. But honestly, I really think you’d need to live inside my twisted brain to bring this story to life. Anyone who would try to steal it would be better advised to steal one from a more normal (and more successful) novelist instead. Besides, I have a 60,000 word head start on you.

So here it is:

This book is Hannah Montana Meets Clan of the Cave Bear!

Teen pop idol Mina Barber gets lost 114,000 years in the past during the production of a reality television series/archeological expedition. Finding herself 7000 miles from the rendezvous point, she has six months to get there, on foot, guided only by her computerized artificial pancreas, Pammie, before the team is scheduled to be whisked back to her future home time. Mina joins up with a ball team making roughly the same journey at the invitation of a trash-talking intercontinental migratory bird. The whole group runs afoul of an empire of fur-bearing cannibalistic hominids, and are enslaved in its undiscovered ancient stone city. In book one, Mina and her companions must escape to the relative safety of a tribe of peaceful, seagoing hominids who will help them on their travels. Additionally complicating Mina’s life is keeping Pammie safe, as Mina is a Type I diabetic who will die without the insulin and blood sugar monitoring that Pammie provides. Pammie, it turns out, is very shiny and attractive to fur-bearing cannibalistic hominids. My dog, Courage, plays the role of a brain damaged baby dire wolf who is along for the ride. There will be three books in the completed series.

My goal with the book is to make it as outrageous as possible without violating any known science. It’s a bit challenging as prehistory is a moving target. Please ignore the giant tapirs. I couldn’t resist.

I had a great time at Epic Confusion in Troy, Michigan, this weekend. In keeping with its Epic theme, there were more pro guests and more random pros than any Confusion in recent memory. That’s great for us pros, although I did hear some grumbling among fans that the fannish side of the con was a bit anemic. Not sure if that’s true or if it was just grumbling, but it was a great time for me. I also spent more time at the con than ever before, commuting up for Thursday evening, and then arriving early in the day on Friday thanks to a day off from work. That allowed me to avoid the slushy rush hour drive that tends to have me arriving at 8 PM and full of adrenaline.

Some highlights of the convention, in stream of consciousness order, include:

Picking Cat Rambo up from the airport at 1:30 AM–she was delayed a total of ten hours in her travel. I took her home instead of the hotel. If you want face time with an author, I highly recommend this sort of airport abduction. Much easier than trying to elbow through convention crowds or waiting in an autograph line. She was so tired, she didn’t even mind the duct tape.

Spending lots of time with Jay Lake. He is a font of wisdom about writing in an amiable, charismatic package.

A ukulele/iphone ocarina Radiohead singalong led by John Scalzi and Anne Harris, respectively, during a convention panel.

Hanging out with the Usual Suspects among the Michigan writer/fan community.

Making some new friends, including a student of Anne’s and Saline author Carrie Harris.

Being present for one of my best and oldest writer friend’s first Toastmaster gig. (He rocked it.)

Getting quite a lot of positive feedback on the elevator pitch for my novel-in-progress. (If I hear, “I love it already!” enough times, I start to believe it.)

Catching the Buckell twins in their costumes in time to snap a photo before they retired for the evening. I also had fun chatting with their Dad, Whatsisface, who hopes to be as popular as his girls one day.

Ironically, the Epically bad taco lunch buffet provided at a discounted rate by the hotel, which provided a great deal of conversation fodder and general agreement about the importance of guacamole.

Getting to sign an actual book at the actual mass author signing. All of my anthology publications are several years old, so having someone show up with one of them was very exciting for me.

I don’t know very much about the running of conventions, but from my outside perspective, it seemed like Confusion had the best concom it has ever had, and I definitely feel like Dave Klecha knocked it out of the park with lit programming. All of the panels I was on were really great topics, and I actually came away with some good ideas from a couple of them.

This article in the Huffington Post has been getting a lot of play in my social networks, and each time I see it posted, I feel a little sad. There’s a lively internet community of mothers of young children. It turns out blogging is on the short list of hobbies that are compatible with the full time parenting lifestyle, and it’s also a satisfying way to reach out and connect with others. However, parenting a very small child (or multiples of them) can give you tunnel vision, too. The Mommy Wars are particularly hard on moms of infants and toddlers, at times turning them into Very Defensive people with tunnel vision.

That leads to turning an innocuous comment like, “Enjoy every moment, the time goes by so fast,” into this:

- “ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF!? IF NOT, YOU SHOULD BE! ONE DAY YOU’LL BE SORRY YOU DIDN’T!” TRUST US!! IT’LL BE OVER TOO SOON! CARPE DIEM!”

 

Come on, now. Really? Are we sixteen years old that we are still so sure the older generation can’t possibly understand us? Or is it perhaps possible that the senior citizen accosting us with the “Enjoy every moment, the time goes by so fast,” message may actually be sharing something new, something that is hard to perceive or understand when you’re in the midst of the day-to-day, minute-to-minute challenge of caring for small children.

First of all, let’s consider the idea that this older woman doesn’t know or forgot how difficult it is to raise children. Is that realistic? We are talking about someone who parented somewhere between the 50′s and the 70′s–a time when there were no disposable diapers and fathers were not expected to help out much, if at all. In fact, even as late as the seventies, many fathers took pride in being clueless about child care. I know some Moms of the older generation who can entertain a crowd with stories about the ONE TIME their husband tried to take care of the children. Not every mother of the 2010′s gets help from a supportive partner, but it is frowned upon for Dads to be clueless and uninvolved. Plus, many of those women had far greater numbers of children than is customary in our time.

My maternal grandmother raised nine children. At one point she had seven children under the age of eight. And she worked full time as a nurse. I have been told that she would often disappear into the bedroom with her door shut to read a book, leaving the kids to fend for themselves, Lord-of-the-Flies fashion. Raising kids was no walk in the park for her.

But grandma was gaga for babies, and I am pretty sure I have heard her say “Enjoy every minute.” This is not a judging message. It means something else, something that’s hard to understand if you’re feeling harried and defensive, but true nonetheless.

The truth is that you lose your babies. Sure, they are replaced by adults with whom, if you’re lucky, you’ll have a rewarding relationship. But when they are small, you get very attached to them AS babies and small children. At first, you don’t feel the loss, because each advance in independence and maturity makes life a little easier, and because each stage is cuter than the last.

But at some point, when your child is, oh, say, twelve-and-three-quarters, just to grab a totally random example off the top of my head, you realize that your baby and your cute preschooler is gone. You may realize it when you hear a strange man’s voice in the house and realize it’s your “baby.” Or you may realize it when your daughter asks for the car keys. Whatever. But it happens to every parent.

And when that happens, it hurts.

If you ever wonder why most grandparents have so much more patience for your little monsters than you yourself, or why they are so indulgent or so darned happy, it’s because they lost all of their babies, and are now enjoying every moment. They are trying to share this hard-earned wisdom with you, as well as a little bit of the pain of their own loss. If you can process that perspective, it will make the wait until bedtime easier.

Jim Hines did a great job commenting on the posing of female fantasy cover models through his own brand of performance art. However, by his own admission, Jim was not flexible enough to execute all of the poses. Proper execution of the poses is crucial to encourage public discussion and social change. Therefore, I have recruited some cover models who demonstrate the needed flexibility to attain and hold those sexy cover poses. Prepare yourself for the awesomeness that is Strike a Pose II: The Kittening.

Here Simba the Cat shows how you can achieve the needed spinal curvature and hip thrust with proper foot alignment while still maintaining the casual, almost careless, grip on his sword. Simba’s gaze is directed demurely downward, and he keeps his abdominal muscles relaxed to prevent strain in the lower back. Thanks, Simba! (photo by Brent Shaffer)

 

 

Courage knows he’s not a cat. But he volunteered for The Shape of Desire cover shot because he has the same feelings in his heart as the pretty lady on the cover. The feelings he has in his heart are that something bad is probably going to happen to him, because it always does. And, oh yeah. Hungry. Deep in his heart he is hungry, and won’t you share your sandwich with him? Also, he would like some calf-height leather boots. Not because he wants to shred them and suck all of their delicious leather juices. That would be wrong. (Photo by Catherine Shaffer)

 

Look at that lucious rear end. And he’s got textbook Sad Kitty Eyes ala Puss n Boots (Shrek II). Wouldn’t you like to give him some tuna? (Photo by Catherine Shaffer)

Diamond? Diamond?!? What are you looking at? We’re doing sexy fantasy cover images. Get on the bus. What do you mean you don’t want to do it? It is NOT demeaning. Look at Jim C. Hines. Do you think he demeaned himself by showing off his sexy, sexy abdomen to demonstrate how exploitive and unrealistic typical fantasy artwork can be? What?!? Well, I guess you’re entitled to your opinion. But I will note that some quadrupeds in this household are team players. You don’t want to be known as the one who sits in the bathtub waiting for mice to emerge from the drain, do you? (Photo by Brent Shaffer)

Here’s Titus doing “Vicious Grace.” Once again, the feline spine shows its flexibility. His hip thrust is perfect. Also, although the young lady at the right and Jim posed with bare torsos, Titus chose to do the shoot totally in the nude. It was an artistic choice on his part. Don’t think about the fact that he’s only three months old. Well, in human years, he’s more like ten years old. Just look at the art and don’t think about how wrong it is. (Photo by Brent Shaffer)

Athena is here to say that not only is this pose doable, it is easy. She can even do actual magic while she’s in the pose.

I hope we can all agree that the real problem with these book covers is that none of them have cats on them. The fact that they feature women who are uncomfortable and possibly in pain, even levitating, when they are supposed to be fighting evil is beside the point. This message brought to you by the cats of the internet. (Caturnet)

My blog has been hit by an avalanche of spam comments. They’re coming in at a rate of about one every four minutes and I’ve been deleting the notifications from my inbox all day long. I get very few legitimate comments here, and tons of spam. I’m frankly tired of it, so comments are gone. And I certainly don’t have time to ride herd on a “comment community,” should I be so lucky as to attract a lot of people who would like to do that. For the very, very few people who comment here, I’m really sorry about that. Feel free to drop me an email or chat with me on Twitter or Google Plus. I’m cathshaffer everywhere, and honestly I am not hard to find on the internet. Google keyword tells me that people are even able to find me with heinous mispellings of my name. (Google keyword also tells me it’s time to delist my phone number and address from the public listings, because some of the things you people are looking for in combination with my name are just not right. Eeeyikes.)

Speaking of Google keyword searches, to the person who searched, “it’s not a good idea to give up drinking as a new uears resolution?” I call bullshit. Own your crap and get sober, dude. If you think you might need to quit drinking to the point that you’re doing google searches, then every day is a good day to do it.

Jim Hines very amusingly parodies poses of female models on a set of fantasy book covers, aided by the photography skills of his wife, Amy Hines. In so doing, he shows us just how badly he wants the Best Fan Writer Hugo, as suggested by Catherine Schaff-Stump.

Okay OKAY, Jim. You’ve got my vote. You don’t have to take off any more clothes! Please vote for him, friends. I can’t be responsible for what he might do if he doesn’t have a rocket on his shelf by the end of the year.