Sheila Rambles

Please excuse Sheila for all past days missed in the course of the year so far. She underwent some considerable difficulties that are not a matter for public declaration. She will make an effort to be more consistent with her excuse notes from this point forward, barring similar catastrophe. Thank you.

I signed up for the Clarion West Write-A-Thon because my hope was that it would motivate me to get my arse in gear and get a workable draft completed of The Two Kinds of Magic . This did not happen. There are reasons, some that cannot be discussed in public and others that are all too familiar.  (The Ugly Handsome Man was in fine form, I must say.)  In point of fact, I was in a bad enough place that I couldn't even make myself write excuse notes, so there are a lot of unexcused non-writing days to account for. I believe today is the last day to donate.  If you'd like to make a donation on my behalf, despite my miserable failure, the link is thus:  http://clarionwest.org/writeathon/sheilaoshea .  Anybody who does will be sent one of my Ten Thousand Flowers to the address you provide when you make the donation--you will not need to send a SASE to receive it. I am slowly working my way back to regular writing sessions in an effort to complete this beast. ...

A couple of writers I follow on Twitter linked me to the  Clarion West Write-a-Thon  and I decided that this novel I've been poking at for the past couple of years might stand a better chance of being finished if I had a proper deadline instead of some vague sense that I should really work on that thing. So I have signed up.  My profile is visible here:  http://clarionwest.org/writeathon/sheilaoshea .  I am asking for any interested sponsors to front the nice folks at Clarion West a dollar for every day that I successfully sidestep all internal excuses and sit my ass down and write.  I will be posting my progress in a daily Tweet from my @wonderbink account with the hashtag #writeathon. I haven't added it to my profile there yet, but I'll state it here--anybody who sponsors me and gives me a mailing address will get a free  Wishing Star  magnet, suitable for sticking on any ferrous metal surfaces you glance at for inspiration. Sound goo...

Please excuse Sheila from working on her novel today as she went straight from work to see Collin Kelley and Theresa Davis read from their new poetry collections, had dinner in Decatur afterward and thus did not get home until quite late.

“Hope?” she said.  Her lips stretched into a mirthless approximation of a smile.  “Hope requires faith, faith requires trust, trust requires courage, courage requires strength and strength inevitably requires replenishment.  I have lived in deprivation for so long that there is no strength left in me and no source of replenishment.  Therefore I have no strength to have courage, no courage to have trust, no trust to have faith and no faith to have hope.  Keep your pretty words and empty promises.  Give me something to eat and a safe place to sleep and then you can speak of hope.”

She took in a mouthful of the wine and held it on her tongue.  The dark and wooden flavors bit in along with a faint undercurrent of sweetness.  She faked a swallow and kept her eyes on his mouth.  A twitch of a smile flickered before it was suppressed. She let the glass slip from her hand and spat the wine out as she crouched down to retrieve it. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “So very sorry.” She put her hands around the largest shard she could find and when he bent down over her, she went for the throat.