More epub

The new edition of Pilikia Is My Business will need a new cover. So I did some thinking about covers. Here's the cover of Piikia as it appeared on the first LTDBooks edition. The two elements are the face of a woman, presumably Val Lyon, the main character, and a late model sedan. Such a car does play a role in the story.

What do I like about the cover?

1. It contains elements that actually appear in the story.

2. A character figures prominently.

I like covers that show something about a character. I'm not a fan of covers that show inanimate objects. Robert Parker's Hundred Dollar Baby has a picture of a semi-automatic pistol and a red garter belt. I get that it's a mystery with a woman, but I would rather see the character holding the gun and a woman wearing the garter. In short, I like to see not only a character, but something of the character's plight on the cover.  The kind of covers found on vintage paperbacks by artists such as Robert McGinnis and Robert McGuire met this ideal

What I don't like about my Pilikia cover is that there is no story. Val's plight is not evident anywhere on the cover. In fact, you can't even tell it is a mystery.

So, my first two requirements for a cover are 1) character, and 2) story.

Another feature of vintage paperbacks is that they stood out on the drugstore racks where they tended to be sold. There was nothing subtle about them. They were designed to catch the attention of shoppers across the store. Subtle covers are fine for books sold in bookstores where customers browse leisurely and up close through the offerings. When you have only a small item that must stand out, color and a striking image become important.

Have you seen how books are sold in the iBook, Kindle and Nook stores?  They are displayed by thumbnails, with eight, ten or twenty thumbnails per page. The iBook thumbnails are smallest, measuring three eighths of an inch wide and five eighths high. The Kindle thumbs are twice that size and the Nook thumbs are slightly larger. They are being sold like drugstore books. They are arranged on the page, the way paperbacks were displayed on racks in the old days. Most of the bookcovers currently in the online stores are full-size covers shrunk down to tiny size. Most of them fail to grab your attention. To get attention in an online store, I believe, a cover must show a character in some kind of danger. The image must be clearly visible and striking, not subtle, with vibrant colors.

So now I have three requirements for a cover:

1. character

2. story

3. striking enough to grab attention when shrunk to 3/8" by 5/8" size.

In a future post, I'll show my top choices for the new edition of Pilikia Is My Business.  What do you like in a book cover?

Adventures in ePub

I decided that I need to get Pilikia Is My Business into the ibook store. It's already available in Kindle, but I'm betting the iPad is the reader of the future. Even though the iBook store is limited right now, I think it will be a big market soon. Now is a good time to get into it. When LTDBooks closed, all of the rights to Pilikia returned to me, so there's nothing to keep me from making it available.

Apple's requirements for indie publishers are:

Requirements for Distributing Content on the iBookstore

Technical Requirements:

An Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.5 or later

At least 1 GB RAM

QuickTime 7.0.3 or later. This is so you can encode and deliver content using our dedicated software.

Book Content Requirements:

ISBNs for all titles you intend to distribute

You must be able to deliver your book content in EPUB format, passing EpubCheck 1.0.5.

Financial Requirements:

A US Tax ID

A valid iTunes Store account, with a credit card on file

Apple does not pay partners until they meet payment requirements and earning thresholds in each territory. You should consider this before applying to work directly with Apple as you may receive payments faster by working with an Apple-approved aggregator.

 I've got the first three requirements. I need new a new ISBN (I think). I just downloaded the ePub application. I'll let you know how it goes.

New Agent

I finally signed with Roger Williams of Publish or Perish Agency. It took longer than I expected it too. Leaving Gina and Talcott Notch was not a simple matter. The termination clause in my contract required thirty days notice. Moreover, any pending sales belonged to Gina. It turned out that at the time of termination, five publishers were reviewing the Splintered Paddle manuscript. That caused further delays while we waited to see if any of them would make an offer. Talk about a frustrating wait. I was torn between wanting the publishers to reject it and wanting them to make an offer. Since I'd already notified Gina I was leaving Talcott, what would happen if one of the five made an offer? Gina would be the agent, but how would our relationship be?

Fortunately, there was no acrimony in leaving Talcott. I think Gina is a good agent and I wish her well. She helped me a lot in making Splintered Paddle into a publishable manuscript. When I was searching for agents, Gina first requested the manuscript and then rejected it. However, the rejection came with a two-page, single-spaced critique. Wow! I'd never received anything like that from an agent. I wrote back and thanked her for it. She responded with another page of thoughts on it and said she'd be willing to look at it again if I revised it. Revise, I did. Three drafts later, I sent it back to her and she agreed to represent it.

Gina represented the manuscript for three years. I left because I became frustrated at no action in that time. I don't know if the lack of action was due to the book being not quite right for publishers or if Gina was contacting the wrong editors. I wish she had given me more reports. I still don't know how many publishers considered the book in that time. At any rate, after three years, I decided I needed a change. First, I revised the book once again and then sent it to Helen Ginger for editing. Helen did a great job. If any of you are looking for an editor, talk to Helen. She is prompt and thorough. I can't say enough about her. You want informative tips about writing? Visit her Straight From Hel blog.

I did send the revised manuscript back to Gina, but seeing no action in nine months, decided to look for another agent.

Roger's agency impressed me with the straight talk to writers on his website and with his blog in which he lists his query queue so you know where the things stand with him. He was enthusiastic about the book and gave me a lot of great advice. He strikes me as very knowledgeable about the industry. I'm looking forward to working with him.

Podcast update: Why do we like thrillers?

Lee Child advises writers not to listen to advice. He also disses the Mets and proclaims his fondness for the blues. Jeff Rutherford caught up with Jack Reacher's creator at Thriller Fest and interviewd him on The Reading and Writng Podcast. I listen to it on iTunes, but you can also listen to it here. Lee talks about Reacher and why people love thrillers.

Podcast report for July 31, 2009

Jeff Rutherford's Reading and Writing Podcast has an interview with science fiction writer Kevin J. Anderson, author of more than 100 novels. 010 Reading and Writing Podcast – Kevin J. Anderson interview

If you are not familiar with the podcast series, it is worth checking out. This is the tenth interview in the series. Previous interview subjects have included James Reasoner and Joe R. Lansdale. All of the past interviews are archived. You can listen to them on the web or iTunes.

Duet

Over on Make Mine Mystery, I posted about how this video provided me with the inspiration I needed to finish one of my first, and still favorite, short stories. The story is Drop Dead Zone and you can read it on my website http://www.marktroy.net. The commercial first appeared during the Super Bowl in February 1998.

New Podcast

I just took my first step into the world of podcasting. On April 18, I led a workshop on "Plotting Your Story." It was a three-hour workshop sponsored by The Brazos Writers. I decided to record it and publish it as five podcosts, one for each of the major topics of the workshop.

You can find the first podcast on my website: http://www.marktroy.net. Click on "Podcast" on the menu bar across the top. Then click on the podcast logo. This one is "Overview of the Three-Act Structure." It is about 24 minutes in length.

It was recorded live using my Macbook as the recording device. The recording/editing software is Garageband. The microphone is the computer's built-in mic. I actually tested out a couple of other commercially available and affordable mics and the built-in worked best. It has it's limitations, however, chief of them being that questions and comments from the audience are not very clear.

I don't know when the rest of the podcasts will be ready. It's amazing how much editing was necessary to get this ready. After a few attempts to make things at microediting each sentence, I gave up and simply eliminated all the long pauses. Microediting was not only tedious, but I cut out too much in a few places with the result that instead of a smooth presentation, it sounds rather choppy in the beginning.

If you download it, let me know what you think. The rest of the podcasts will be published as I finish them.

Happy Birthday Ken Follett

Ken Follett is 60 today. He is the author of more than a dozen thrillers including Triple, Eye Of The Needle, and The Key To Rebecca. He won an Edgar for Eye Of the Needle. You can find out more about Follett on his website.

Hearing about his birthday today struck a chord with me because I just started re-reading The Key To Rebecca for the third time. The reason I'm re-reading it (in addition to the fact that it's worth reading over and over) is that I thought I would use it as an example of a great beginning for a post I was writing on Make Mine Mystery. That post had to do with a rule writers often hear, "Don't start with the weather."

I was going to use The Key To Rebecca to make my point, but that part ended up on the cutting room floor. Now his birthday gives me a chance to revisit that point.

The reason for the admonition against starting with the weather, I believe, is that a good beginning throws the reader into the center of a fight. A good beginning should have desire or danger or decision. The main character's goals and/or life should be in jeopardy. It should be something consequential. Weather is usually inconsequential, but sometimes it's not. Even if the weather is consequential, you can have more impact leaving it out as Follett does in The Key To Rebecca.

The book begins famously with the sentence,

The last camel collapsed at noon.

No weather.

We all know what kills camels--the hot desert sun. A lesser writer might have given us a few paragraphs of how hot the sun was on the burning sands. We don't need that. Telling us that the camel collapsed says it all and sets an ominous tone. When you're out of camels, you're in deep doo-doo. In fact, it's not until six paragraphs later, on the next page, that he tells us the sun is relentless and the temperature is reaching 110. By leaving the weather until later, when It's already clear that the weather is the culprit, makes for an unforgettable beginning.

Happy Birthday, Ken Follett!

An Evening with Roy Blount Jr.

Wednesday evening my wife and I went to St. Edward's University in Austin for an evening with Roy Blount Jr. The event was sponsored by the Writer's League of Texas. It coincided with Blount's being in Austin for a taping of the NPR comedy show, "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me."

I admit to being a "Wait, wait" addict. No work gets done at our house on Saturday mornings when "Wait, wait" is on, and Blount, with his deadpan humor is one of the funniest people on the show. His bit about singing "Wild Thing" with The Rock Bottom Remainders was hilarious, as was his discussion of E.J. Junior Senior Junior High School.

The event was held in a top floor room of the main building of St. Edward's in what was probably the original chapel. We were feasting away on duck and brie quesadillas and red wine under stained-glass windows when the man, himself, walked up to our table and began talking.

He looks better on radio.

Okay, that was a joke. How can you write about a humorist without joking? Actually, he looks like a white-haired Southerner, which is what he is.

In the formal part of the evening, well, maybe formal is the wrong word, because it got off to a light-hearted start. Blount put his wine glass on the podium and it started to slide. He caught it and said he hates slanted podiums. "They must think a man can't drink and lecture at the same time." After that, Blount, proved that he could. A former writer for Sports Illustrated, he gave a humorous account of working with Wilt Chamberlain. From there he went into a long story about his negotiations between Google and the Authors Guild, of which he's president, over Google's program to scan and make available digital copies of books. He first critiqued their spelling ("Google" is a misspelling of "googol" which means one times ten to the hundredth power) and then praised their food policy (no employee is more than 100 feet from free food.) After two and a half years of lunch negotiations, Blount hammered out an agreement with Google, authors and publishers over access to out of print books.

In response to a question about Kindle and some audience members' lament over the demise of print media, especially newspapers, Blount took the side of an imaginary Kindle lover. He said, "I never could figure out how you could deal with that huge, floppy thing of paper. It gets all tangled up and the pages keep blowing away at the beach."

My wife asked about the program and he talked about doing the show in his underwear when the program first began and the panelists participated by telephone.

Afterwards Blount signed copies of his books. His 21st and latest book is Alphabet Juice. I never pass up a chance to get a signed copy from an author. Now I've got a book and a face to go with the voice on the radio.

Man to man, woman to woman

On the Make Mine Mystery blog, today, I write about the conversation differences between men and women. Here, I expand on that with some man-to-man talk.

Man-to-man talk is even more laconic than man-to-woman talk. Compare the following passage with Hawk to the passage with Susan. Same length: Six utterances for Hawk, five for Spenser. Only here Spenser averages 2.8 words per utterance. As with his conversation with Susan about half of his utterances are fragments. Likewise with Hawk. His sentences tend to be short and half are fragments

Men connect with each other through games of one-upmanship that involve building themselves up and putting the other one down. When Hawk tells Spenser he's worth a third, not half and Spenser responds by calling Hawk a "cheap bastard," they are connecting with each other, the more so because there is actually nothing at stake.

"You working on anything?" Hawk said.
"I was thinking about breakfast,” I said.
"I might need some support,” Hawk said.
"You might?”
“Yeah. Pay’s lousy.”
"How much?" I said.
"I’m getting nothing.”
"I’ll take half,” I said.
"You ain’t worth half,” Hawk said. “Besides I got the job and already put in a lot of time on it. Give you a third.”
“Cheap Bastard,” I said.
“Take it or leave it,” Hawk said.

Robert B. Parker, Double Deuce.

Here, in contrast, is an exchange between two women, Tess Monaghan and her friend Whitney Talbot. Tess is a private eye and they are planning a job together. Unlike men who bond through one-upmanship, these women bond differently.

"Can I pass for seventeen?" Tess asked, leaning forward to study her face in the rearview mirror.
"You'll squeak by in that light, if only because he wants to believe you're seventeen.," Whitney said, not unkindly for her. "Besides, when was the last time a man looked at your face upon first meeting?"

Laura Lippman, The Last Place.

In contrast to Hawk and Spenser, each of these women use longer sentences, about 8.5 words each. About two-thirds of the their sentences are complete. Women talk to women much as they talk to men.

Women connect with other women by offering compliments as Whitney does at the end here when she suggests that Tess has a figure that men notice.

Kindle

I borrowed a Kindle from the Texas A&M library. The library bought about a dozen of them for faculty, staff and students to test out. The library allowed me to download two books so I chose my book, Pilikia Is My Business, because I wanted to see how it looks on the Kindle, and a Lee Child book. When I picked up the Kindle, it already came with two other books that a previous installer had borrowed. Surprise, surprise, the previous borrower had downloaded a different Lee Child.

The Kindle is about the size and weight of a trade paperback. Most of the reviews have been correct. The Kindle is easy to use and the electronic ink is easy to read. The reviews have also been correct that the next page and back page buttons are too easy to hit accidently. I keep navigating away unintentionally. It's like constantly dropping the book or trying to read on a windy day. I'm sure that I'll eventually get used to it and learn how to avoid clicking away.

Leaving a bookmark is not quite as easy as bending the corner or putting a marker between the pages. You have to click a wheel which brings up a menu of choices. Then you have to turn the wheel to get the cursor to the add bookmark choice, and click it again. You can have a lot of book marks. When you return to the Kindle, it will open to your last bookmark. To find other bookmarks, you have to go to the menu again and pull up the list. The bookmarks are identified by the first line on the page, not page number. I'll have more to say about that.

Leaving notes is also as easy as leaving a bookmark and the process is similar. Click the wheel, go to the menu, choose notes, which brings up another menu, and find the item for making a new note. You type the note using a tiny keypad. It's not touch typing, but it works. My six year-old granddaughter, Morgan, mastered it with very little instruction.

My complaint about the Kindle? It doesn't have page numbers. It marks things by "location" which appear to be line numbers, but don't include blank lines. Why no page numbers? The Kindle navigates by pages, so why aren't they listed? I felt lost without the page numbers because I depend on them heavily when I read. I wrote about how I read in a blog post, By The Numbers. Basically, I use the page numbers to identify the changes in acts. I tried using the locations in the same way, but it's not as easy or intuitive as using page numbers.

I'll have more to post about Kindle in the future.

Joe R. Lansdale

In Sunday's newspaper (The Bryan/College Station Eagle), Glenn Dromgoole, who reviews books by Texas authors, had this to say about Joe:

Many readers may not be familiar with his writing. I confess I wasn't until last week when I sat down and read straight through two of his Hap and Leonard mysteries set in East Texas. Now, I'm a big fan.


I'm not surprised Dromgoole's become a big fan after reading some of Joe's books, but I am surprised he hadn't heard of Joe before now. I first learned about Joe when I moved to Texas and took a three-day writing workshop headed by Joe and Lew Shiner. That was twenty years ago. Joe had already attained a cult following with his book, The Drive-in. I thought I was the last person who hadn't heard of Joe R. Lansdale.

The workshop was an eye-opener. There were about twenty of us. Each submitted about ten pages of a manuscript. Everybody in the workshop had their chance to critique everybody else, but Joe and Lew did most of the critiquing. It was their opinions that everybody was there for anyway.

I submitted the first ten pages of a mystery novel that was nearly finished. It was about an amateur detective whose boss and mentor is murdered. That's really all I remember of the plot. The sleuth was not particularly adept at solving a crime, so I paired him with a kick-ass, former cop. Her name was Val Lyon.

Joe and Lew tore the story apart. They listed 11 points/suggestions. I don't remember all of them, although I took them all to heart. The first two, however, floored me. Number one was write the story from Val's point of view. Number two was tell it in the first person, if possible. If possible was underlined and followed by exclamation points like they were throwing up a challenge to me.

I thought, "Crap, I paid for this?"

We talked about it later. Joe told me to take risks, get out of my comfort zone. He said you can't be a good writer if you play it safe.

Thus was born the Val Lyon series. I finished that first book he critiqued. It was a lot better when told in Val's voice, but it never sold. But the second book, Pilikia Is My Business, did sell. Likewise a number of short stories. I have Joe R. Lansdale to thank for setting me on this road.

If you have never heard of Joe R. Lansdale, his Hap Collins and Leonard Pine series is being re-released by Vintage Books. Pick up the first one, Savage Season, and I guarantee you'll be hooked. To see how Joe handles a woman protagonist, read Sunset and Sawdust.

February

Some commentator, whose name I don't recall, said that February is the dreariest mont because football has ended, baseball hasn't started, and basketball has not reached the playoffs, which is when it finally gets interesting. According to that commentator, the only thing to look forward to in February is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

I can think of other reasons to look forward to February: Valentine's Day, my granddaughter's birthday, the birthdays of Lincoln and Darwin (which they share with my granddaughter), the birthdays of George Washington and Edna St. Vincent Millay (which they share with me.) And the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

I admit I look forward to the issue, but not only for the models. I've gotten a lot of story ideas from the magazine. The swimsuit issue is not entirely about swimsuits. SI includes sports articles in between the pulchritude. They are usually features about women athletes or women's sporting events that receive very little coverage elsewhere. Warning, bad pun coming: the SI Swimsuit Issue is all about women who get very little coverage. Because the main character in my detective stories is a woman, Val Lyon, I peruse those articles carefully.

One article that stays in my memory was about a young woman who wanted to be a matador, but wasn't getting much support from the other matadors in a male sport. In fact, she received a lot of harassment. I haven't used that idea yet, but I'm still kicking it around.

Another story was about the women's Molokai to Oahu outrigger canoe race. I had seen the end of the race when I lived in Hawaii, but really didn't know much about it until I read the article. The race covers 40 miles of one of the most treacherous channels in the world. Sometimes called the Molokai Express, it is a deep water channel between the two islands where you have tremendous crossing forces--winds from the East funneling between the land masses and giant rollers from the South. Very unpredictable. The canoes sometimes surf the face of the swells like run away ore trains. These canoes carry six paddlers and weigh about 1400 pounds fully loaded. Because no paddler can paddle the entire race, each team has ten members who switch out during the race. A support boat drops a paddler into the water where she waits for the canoe to come alongside so she can climb in while another paddler flops out. The transformations are quick. The article stated that the most dangerous part of the race is the transition. The steerswoman will try to get the canoe as close to the paddler as possible. But suppose it gets hit by a wave at the wrong time? That canoe could become a dangerous torpedo. That idea became my first published short story, "Wahine O Ka Hoe,", which was published in Murderous Intent Mystery Magazine and which you can read on my website.

I did another story called "Homewreckers" after an SI article about the women of Purdue beating the women of Tennessee at home. I already mentioned my story, "Horns" in an earlier post and how it came from an SI article.

One of the most memorable SI stories was a profile of basketball player, Sheila Tighe, the top basketball player of either sex when she graduated from high school. She turned down scholarships at top universities to attend college in New Jersey so she could be near her home and her father, who was her best friend. They would talk and replay every game they ever saw. Then her father died of Alzheimer's and Sheila decided to try out for the WNBA which was just forming. Her motivation was the memory of her father. She was thirty-five at the time and competing with women just out of college, but she gave it her whole effort. She worked so hard at it that she painted her toenails black to match the bruises on her toes. Unfortunately, she didn't make the cut, but her drive is what inspires my main characters.

February, my favorite month.

Online Writing Workshops

I have put together a list of online writing workshops. The list is available on my Brazos Writers site.

Writing advice from George Pelecanos

If George Pelecanos gives advice on writing, I'm on it. I'll take every word and tattoo it into my brain. Pelecanos doesn't need to say a lot about writing, because his advice, like his stories, gets right to the essence, like a stiletto into the heart. Hear is a some advice that he put into one of his books, Shame the Devil (2000), which I'm reading as my holiday treat. The advice is given by a surprising source, a cold-blooded killer, Frank Farrow, who, only 35 pages earlier, had executed four men, killed a cop and run over a five year-old boy.

"He had enjoyed the man's book but felt in the end that the writer had been holding back, had not gone far enough into that black rotted place that surely would have existed in his lead character's mind.

In the end, the writer had been afraid. In general, thought Farrow, that was the flaw in most people, a timidity that separated them from those who were strong. They used their idea of Goodness and Love as an excuse for living a life of weakness. People were afraid to go to that black place and use it when the time came, or even admit that it was there."

Shame the Devil, George Pelecanos, Dell, 2000., page 61.

Hop on over to Make Mine Mystery

Hop on over to Make Mine Mystery. Tomorrow is my turn to post and I will be discussing the many ways authors have of isolating the protagonist, one of the principles for building suspense. Whether you or a reader or a writer, I hope the post will be interesting. Please leave a comment there.

Ballsy, Kick-ass Babes

Women's Rugby, Texas A&M University, September 27.

That's right, Rugby.  This is the sport that was the violent precursor to American Football.  It was deemed so dangerous that American players needed pads and helmets.  My image of the typical rugby player is a large, loutish fellow with broken nose and missing teeth, whose breath smells like the floor behind a bar.  Most girls would cringe at the thought of bringing a rugby player home to meet the parents.

What if the player IS a girl?

The blonde on the right, putting the hurt to the other girl is a student worker in my office.  Her name is Lanae.  She is a junior marketing major and when she graduates she will be wearing tailored suits, carrying a leather briefcase and leading focus groups.  Maybe that's what she's doing now.  Focus, group!

Lanae is attractive.  Most people would say she's cute.  The male student workers say she's a babe, a chick, a hottie.  But those are words you normally wouldn't use for people who play a sport such as rugby, a sport even most men are too chicken to play.

Monday morning conversation in our office sometimes goes like this:

How was your weekend?

Good.  I broke a girl's nose.

Lanae is a product of Title IX, the Federal Education Act that leveled the playing field for men and women.  She played soccer and basketball as a kid, even hoped to get a basketball scholarship.  When that didn't work out, she came to A&M where she joined the Rugby team.  

Rugby is a non-varsity sport.  There are no scholarships, no locker rooms, no training facilities, no team bus or plane.  They don't play in front of 85,000 screaming fans.  In fact, there are hardly any fans at all.  Unlike football, there is no future full of signing bonuses and ESPN highlights.  No Madden 2009, no fantasy leagues.  

The players practice just as hard, play just as hard, but when they get hurt they have a team mate drive them to the emergency room.  No team physicians for them.  They have to come back to class on Monday and they are still expected to keep up their grades.  

So why do women play sports like this?  Why put your body at risk for so little extrinsic reward?  Lanae likes the excitement, the competition and the other players.  The team is like family, she says.

Billie Jean King, in an interview about Title IX, said that the best thing about the act was the effect it had on team sports.  There had been plenty of women athletes before Title IX, but they were mainly individual sports like tennis, golf, swimming and figure skating.  They were certainly not contact sports.  The picture above is exactly what a lot of opponents of Title IX feared--women engaging in acts of violence, delivering pain, and enjoying it.

It is no surprise that women can deliver violence, but the traditional view of women is that they are violent in defending their family.  Men, on the other hand, can be violent in defense of the group.  Thus, women stayed home while men went to war.  Title IX and the opening of team sports to women, changed that.  Now women could be violent and could sacrifice themselves for the group, not just the family.  Or, as Lanae says, the team becomes the family.

Title IX was important to me because most of my stories have a woman protagonist.  I admit that I had a hard time understanding my characters until I gave them a team sport background.  Val Lyon was a college and pro basketball player.  Ava Rome, my newest detective, plays volleyball and paddles.  Playing a team sport adds a dimension to their character and motivation that I can readily understand.  I think a lot of recent women detectives have had some background in team sports and that makes them believable protagonists when the story demands that they put their bodies on the line for someone who is not family.  The intrinsic motivation of playing for pure pleasure and comradeship makes a character much more likable. It's hard to like an over-paid professional athlete, but easy to root for someone who plays for the love of the game.

When I began writing Val Lyon, I drew inspiration from Jennifer Rizzotti, a point guard for the U Conn Huskies who played in knee pads because she wasn't afraid to throw herself on the floor after a loose ball.  Another source of inspiration was Sheila Tighe, who, at 35 years of age tried out for the WNBA after having been a star in college years before.  Tighe worked so hard that she painted her toenails black to match the bruises on her toes.  More recent inspiration came from Stacy Sykora, the US Olympic volleyball player who chest-butted her team mates when she came on court and kept them fired up.  

Lanae, putting the hurt to an opponent on the rugby pitch, is now my inspiration.  I hope Ava is ready for some rugby

Marathon training

This is the part of training I hate--the long runs. Ernie and I ran 17 miles on Saturday. The day couldn't have been better for a run. Cool, no rain, no wind. Trouble was, I had missed the 15 miler the week before because of Ike and spending time at the EOC, so I wasn't ready for 17. Between 8.5 and 11, I was really starting to feel the effort. At about 13 I began feeling lightheaded. I think we walked 2-3 of the last 5 miles. All in all, not very encouraging. One thing I know, however, is that sometimes the worst day of training ends up giving the most benefit. I hope I get over this hump and get stronger.

Here it comes-- a lame sports metaphor for writing.

Sometimes writing is like that, too. There are days when the words won't come, when every sentence is a struggle and when the story just seems to stall out. All you can do is fight through it. A lot of times, those tough periods are followed by great breaktrhoughs. You just have to tough it out.