The Journal of Michael Merriam

careswen and I traveled back to Oklahoma over the Christmas holidays to visit with family and friends. This was the first time we had been back since 2009, and careswen had the lovely idea that I should do some public readings and storytelling events in our old home state. It was a great idea. None of our family or friends in Oklahoma had been to one of my readings, and I was incorporating my storytelling-as-performance into what I was doing.

( Long Entry With Pictures )

My Aunt F passed away last night. This comes as no surprise to me or anyone else in the family. She has been terribly sick for a number of years and incredibly frail for about the last year or two. We all knew it was coming soon. I will miss her and I am sad at her passing, though relieved that she is no longer in so much pain. My main concern now is for the living: my uncle, my nieces, nephews, and her grandchildren.

I will remember her as a kind and mild woman who had a great passion for her family, who raised and presided over a large brood of children and grandchildren, who hung on to life tooth-and-nail to see her grandchildren born and growing up.

By all the measures of life that were important to her—-husband, children, siblings, extended family, church family, and kindness toward others-—her life was full and rich: a thing to be celebrated.

I am plugging away on the developmental edits. I should be done with this first pass by this weekend. I've hit a string of scenes that are on the chopping block. Some of them are going to be condensed and rolled together, a couple might get cut completely because neither I nor the editor are sure how they advance the story, and a couple look to be made obsolete during the next pass.

I sold a short story, "Memory," to Ray Gun Revival. It's another bit of space opera, something I write from time-to-time. I'm always pleased to find a home for these stories. For any of my stories, actually. I am always a bit amazed that when someone wants to pay me money for the things I write.

Though it was a tough day, with a household member being terribly sick, we all got through it. The snow outside was just enough to make everything pretty again, covering up the dirty muck. I have brownies in the oven and coffee at hand. I'm recording the BCS Championship game, and plan to start watching it in an hour or so. For the record, I will be cheering for the Oregon Ducks.

Year before I posted an entry here on Live Journal. I suspect, nay, I know, that it is the holiday crush. We have been busy: family visit, visiting friends, New Year's Eve, having a belated birthday get together. Much fun has been had, as well as food consumed and alcohol imbibed, all good things to help push back against the darkness of winter.

The Christmas decorations are taken down and put back into storage. Tomorrow, I shall start to reset the house back to normal, or at least what passes for normal around here. careswen starts her final class of graduate school this week. We are working on financial things, trying to get ready for her to finish school and make the jump into her career. Things are moving forward all around me.

I'll make a post about what cons and such I will be at this year later this week. I will say that it looks to be a busy year. I have a cool sounding MinnSpec meeting coming up on two weeks, one of our members giving a presentation about a seminar focused on story construction he attended last autumn. I am taking part in a self-editing seminar being run on a forum by the Editor-in-Chief of Carina Press for Carina Press authors for the next three weeks. This can only help me as a writer, moving forward.

I saw the ophthalmologist last week. Still blind. No surprise, really.

The Reverend Selena is very fuzzy still.

Family visit continues. We went out to the casino last night (a holiday tradition) and came back with lighter wallets. We also took Brother-in-Law to see HP7.1. We've been watching a lot of football.

Gifts were exchanged today, the Reverend Selena making out like a bandit, though everyone else got nice gifts as well. I love my new stainless steel cookware. Christmas dinner came off with only a couple of minor hitches, so it's good to know I still have my touch in the kitchen.

Now, I plan to have a nice, quiet afternoon and evening hanging out with the family and relaxing. I'm not sure what we are doing tomorrow.

I've had my head down and pushing hard trying to complete this draft of Dead Brew, aka The Monster-Hunting Barista novel. It is still too short for comfort, coming in at 77,000 words, but it is what it is and I have no idea how to add more to it at this point. Even short of the industry more or less standard 85K to 100K for an UF novel, I think I can polish it down and sell it.

While I wait for Dead Brew to spend a little time on the back burner, I plan to return to the Steampunk Spy-Thriller, tentatively titled The Curious Case of the Jeweled Horn, and finish the rewrites which has been percolating in the back of my mind for the last few weeks.

I really wanted to finish this rewrite pass on Dead Brew now, because we have family coming up from Oklahoma for Christmas, arriving this Wednesday and leaving next Monday morning, so I figure I won't get a lot of time to work. Which may translate into more blogging over the holidays, but no promises. Of course, I say that, so something will mug me and demand to be written.

I re-signed up for services with MN State Services for the Blind. I'm still looking for part-time work, something 15 to 24 hours a week to help bring in a little extra income while careswen finishes graduate school, completes her licensure requirements, and spins up her practice. That means after the first of the year, I am going to have to devote a little more energy to the job hunting, but SSB will be assigning me a service that specializes in placement of people with disabilities in the workforce. I am cautiously optimistic on this front.

Now, I shall make a list of the things I need to get done around the house over the next two days.

We have survived SNOWPOCALYPSE 2010! Which is more than I can say for the tired old Metrodome.

Hopkins, MN got 20.5 inches of snow. I suspect I won't see my patio again until April. I did manage go clear a path to the walk, and the home owners association has cleared the walks down to the streets. The car is safe in the garage, though careswen almost got stranded at her office yesterday. She rode the bus into the office to see her clients, thinking (rightfully) that it was safer than driving in the ever-worsening conditions, but then things got so bad Metro Transit stopped running the buses. And the Mall of America closed. This morning I made sure the vents and exhaust for my heater were cleared, and brushed the snow off the gas meter so it doesn't freeze. I do not plan on venturing out again today.

Received a pair of 8X10 prints of the cover art for Should We Drown in Feathered Sleep that I can use at my readings next year. I am also supposed to receive postcards to hand out and put on freebie tables. The Reverend Selena approves mightily of the envelope from Harlequin, and periodically perches on it.

I have reach a scene in my rewrite of Dead Brew that, I realized this morning, I am actively avoiding. I had glossed over a difficult phone conversation between Sharisha and her father, but I realized I need to write this out. I need this scene to show the difficult relationship between them, because Sharisha's difficult relationship with her family is a key element of this book. Sometimes it actually is okay to tell and not bother showing (sacrilege, I know, but sometimes exposition is your friend). This is not one of those moments. So I need to change this 900 word scene to something more, and I am dreading it, because I know writing this scene will force me to consider my own sometimes difficult relationship with my late father.

Oh well. The snow is really pretty in the bright sunshine today.

*sigh*

Time to put on my big boy pants and write this scene.

Welcome to the world Taven Lee Merriam. My fourth grandchild was born today, a 7 pound 10 ounce boy to my #2 son and his fiancee.

15 years ago today, I asked careswen to marry me. It was one of the smartest things I've ever done.

June 18–24: 4th Street Fantasy Convention
June 28: Attended An Inconvenient Squirrel
July 2–5: CONvergence
July 17–21: Family Visit
July 21: Attended RockStar Storytellers
July 30: MN Art Council Artist Initiative Grant Deadline
July 30–August 9: Fringe Festival (We are hitting several shows this year)
July 31–August 2: Diversicon
August 14–16: Cabin Trip for a Friend's Birthday

Add in lots of one-night fun stuff with friends, a regular gaming group, MinnSpec, going to Renfest, rehearsing for a bit of performance storytelling, and... well, the days are just packed.

Oh, and writing fiction. Let's not forget that.

I'm not complaining, mind, because it's all fun stuff. I'm just letting you know why the blog has been quieter than usual lately, and might be for a bit yet (though I really do have things I want to blog about).

Somewhere in there I need to have cataract surgery.

Oh, and I have a new default icon. This is from the KFAI radio show I was on a few weeks back. That's my talented friend Jaye Lawrence (aka wordswoman) sitting next to me.

Off to bake bread.