06.02.09
Posted in Personal at 7:16 pm by JC
My grandmother used to sing me that song whenever I came to visit, and having it sing print out lyrics to me whenever I logged on was like a little hello from the beyond.
Updates On Life:
1. I am MHS’s Teacher of the Year. This is really cool to me. I’ve never even been nominated before, and the fact that I won both the staff and the student vote means more to me than I can express.
2. Beanette is due on Thursday, and I’m ridiculously excited about meeting her. I think that even surpasses the terror that I’ll somehow not be an intrinisic part of Kat’s life anymore after she has a baby. Stupid? Yes. But it’s still there. I’m like the only baby-less person – other than my little sister, who isn’t married (yet) and therefore doesn’t quite count -that’s still plan on having one.
3. Speaking of my sister, we’re on the countdown to her being married and therefore not in town anymore. *tear* In celebration/mourning of her departure, we’re planning a Ju ne chock full of doing all those cool things that your city has to offer than you never do because you live there. Maybe I’ll blog about the coolest bits.
4. I still haven’t written the last chapter of my dern second book. *sigh* If this is going to be the breakthrough novel that changes EVERYTHING, I have to, you know, actually finish it. I got feedback on the first 35-40 pages, though, and it was really good, which is, well, good. And I’m going through the whole dang thing (all 200 pages) and making a few changes based on the critique and it’s logical conclusions and a few cool writing things I’ve learned since writing it the first time. I even have the website planned out and large chunks of the advertising campaign ready to go, I just need to, you know, finish writing it.
5. Scott got a Wii for his birthday. I’m going to partially blame it for my lack of finishing. I’m also going to blame the end of the school year sucking my brains out, as well as spending copious amounts of time working on our house’s addition (Operation Munchkin requiring, in our American, over-bearing and space conscious attitudes, more room).
6. Speaking of the addition, I’m not looking for another job until the house is finished, as Scott and I have declare me the offical contractor. This is exciting, and makes me feel all in charge. On the other hand, theren’s this nagging feeling that the harder I work, the sooner I’ll have to find paying employment. Hmm…. I have this secret (OK, no longer so secret) vision that Scott will be SO thrilled with my working finishing the addition and keeping the house clean and grocery shopping done that he’ll decide having me stay home is the best thing. Otherwise I’m feeling sorta nostalgic about teaching (even though I haven’t stopped yet) and might end up applying back at Manor as like a tutor or secretary or something. Something with not ten hour days and lots of grading and lesson plans on the J drive.
OK, so, I’m not getting taht dern novel finished if I’m typing on my blog, so I should get typing on Open Office instead. Wish me luck!
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09.28.08
Posted in Personal at 10:42 pm by JC
I am the worst housekeeper on earth, or close to it anyway. I can admit this. Not with pride; I wish I did a better job, but I don’t mind sharing my lack of talent. But there is something nice about cleaning, once you’re doing it, and I do have dreams about keeping a clean and organized house one day. I have ideas for just how I want to do it. It will never be perfect, but I think I can be an OK housfrau one of these days. I really want to.
But cleaning does give me time to think, and usually its the “cleaning and sorting my life” sort of thinking. I guess they go well together. I always try to juggle too many things in my life, and the problem with that is not that I have too long a list, but that all the things I juggle are HUGE. And all of them are dear to my heart. But somehow in life, the wrong things end up on top, like my job, instead of my home, my family, my friends, my faith. I think that a lot of people make this mistake. Part of me says that if I took care of things in the right order, that everything would run more smoothly, but work is constantly running behind – behind on grading, behind on the play, behind on whatever asinine paperwork I’m supposed to be completing – that the idea of putting it further down my list sounds like a disaster.
I’m the type of person that loves to make personal schedules (work out here, work on next novel here, clean house here), and then can’t stick with them. Obviously I’m not making a schedule I can live with. But cleaning the sink made me feel, for a little while at least, that maybe I could.
I also thought a lot about writing. I have wanted to be a writer ever since I was a kid; I grew up with my nose in a book and a pen in my hand. For the last couple years I’ve finally decided to get serious about it, but, like most worthwhile things, it has been hard. I had given up on being a novelist around the age of 16 because I convinced myself I couldn’t compose an entire novel; they were just too long. But then last January I proved my 16 year old self wrong. Now I’m restructuring, reworking, retooling, re-everything-ing.
It’s interesting; when you tell people you’re working on a novel, one of the many responses is something to the effect of “Do you see all the crap that gets published? You can do it if they can.” This is, of course, meant as a compliment; someone is saying that after assessing my intelligence, they have deemed me more competent than the drivel they’ve read. I do appreciate this, I guess, and it is funny how many writers I know (myself included) that have been comforted by reading a “what-the-hell-was-everyone-thinking-when-they-paid-for-this” novel. But I realized [as I scrubbed a particularly stuck smooch of toothpaste] that that just isn’t good enough. Not only because I don’t want to waste my time tracking down the one agent and editor combo willing to publish garbage, but because I have absolutely no desire for anyone to ever say, “Well did you read that book by JC Garren? Yeah, if she can get published, so can you.” I’m better than that, and my characters deserve more than that.
So, bring on your rejections, your criticisms, and, if you have any, your compliments. I will take it. I may ignore the parts I disagree with, but I want to be good. And that means learning my craft.
I had other thoughts while cleaning the bathtub and the toilet, but I’ll save you from those.
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07.27.08
Posted in Society, Writing at 11:22 pm by JC
As I someone striving to be a published author, I often get asked the question (when I dare admit that I want to be a published author) “What’s your book about?” I actually have several, and I usually try to explain the concept of urban fantasy and then tell “The One About the Changeling and the Chola” or “The One About Heaven’s Youngest Angel.” I always get asked if it’s finished, and sometimes I admit that, while I haven’t finished either of those, I have finished another one called Fish in the Sun. “Well, what’s that about?” Then I blush. See, it’s about vampires. And I’ve discovered that the world can be pretty neatly divided into two groups – those that think vampires are fascinating and have also written a book about them, and those who don’t get why a blood sucking corpse makes a good romantic lead. And put that way, I can see their point.
“Why vampires?” I’ve heard the question often enough, usually posed to a room full of people who shrug their heads and laugh while I mentally beat my head on the table for apparently being the only one in the room who reads (and writes) about fangs and flesh (even though that statistically can’t be possible based on the number of these books that get sold every year). So. In honor of every time I haven’t been able (or haven’t had the guts) to stand up in a room full of people and proudly declare, “I write vampire novels! Who’s with me?” here’s the first entry in a series that attempts to answer the oft-asked question. Why vampires?
*** You’ll have to forgive me; this first edition is a little ponce-y. 
Ahh…. English majors…. ***
The Historical Vampire is Evil
Which does make a lot more sense. We find them in legends of the Norse draugr, the Celtic dearg-du, the Russian upir: corpses that feed on the living, representing the power of night, death, and the real dangers that came with being alone in a world without technology to brighten the darkness.
Stoker and other writers of the 19th century created a modern vampire – the ultimate dead, white male that was rich, powerful, and had no qualms about killing for food, money, or pleasure. Dracula was a Lord in a time when their power was feared because they represented a class with few boundaries and a monstrous appetite. Their decadence was someone else’s death. Their blood siphoning could be likened to sucking away the life of the people who worked their fields and scrubbed their chamber pots so that they could have another party. The vampires as immortal corpses show us a fear that we are working ourselves to death for a status that will never change. There is no social revolution; as a class we are dominated eternally by the beautiful untouchables with historical power and money.
In Victorian times, gothic writers also found unlikely heroes in characters like Rochester and Heathcliff – men who were domineering and could be evil, but who at least had some inner conflict about it. This made them human and separated them from the monsters; they were social predators with guilt. Rochester was even depicted as victimized by the same society that upheld him and forced him to make victims out of others. Keep this in mind as we progress. A lot of people adore Rochester and sob over the fate of Heathcliff and Catherine, but neither of them are good people and represent the same power and domination that Dracula did, just in a more socially palatable form.
And this combination leads us to what I consider the first “modern” vampire (or at least the first popular example of it):
Interview With a Vampire and How It Changed Everything
In Lestat and Louis, we have the first popular vampires of conscience. Louis hates that he has to prey on people to survive; Lestat has a more cavalier attitude about it, but there’s a sense that his whimsy hides a deeper conflict about the potential for God and salvation in a world of such chaos. How could any God let him become immortal while others die? And what God would make immortality dependent on others’ pain? Such questions could drive a man mad, so let’s party like a rock star instead.
But here we have the the vampire as hero – he is a killer, but like the Byronic heroes of the 19th Century, he is no longer cold about it. Here is a vampire we as Americans in the 21st century can understand, because we have much in common with him. Americans on the whole have a guilty conscience because it seems like we can’t help siphoning the life out of the world. One day I looked at my closet and it struck me that a lot of people’s lives got sucked away in factories under a government with no labor laws, working insane hours for starvation wages… so that I could have cheap shirts. My friends have starting having children, and I see them with their toys that might’ve been made by children not much older than them; children who will never have a chance because our kids need more plastic crap. I drive to work every day of the school year, alone in my car, and suck gas out of the earth. I take home leftovers and fill another landfill with one more styrofoam box. I am a vampire, and every day people are dying while I maintain my lifestyle.
The vampire has become the archetypal hero of an industrialized nation- beautiful, powerful, educated, wealthy, and constantly wondering if he is damned just for existing. Can God possibly exist if I, with all my flaws, am in charge? Can God possibly be fair if I am damned for not hermitizing myself away from the society that created and raised me?
And that, I believe, is the first step to understanding the fascination of the literary vampire. The exchange of blood with a modern vampire is not about eating platelets, but a guilty acknowledgment that we live on the pain of somebody else – whether we want to or not.
And that’s episode 1 in my answer the question… Why vampires? Next time, I promise less English-major-y historical exhortation.
***Note, I am going to RWA Convention! If you’re a convention attendant, I hope to see you there! If not… I probably won’t update for awhile, so forgive me. I’ll see y’all again in August! ***
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07.10.08
Posted in Society, Writing at 3:38 pm by JC
So, sometimes I stumble upon an old blog entry that strikes my fancy. Here’s one. http://dglm.blogspot.com/2007/11/jim-mccarthy-is-excited-that-3-out-of-4.html
My favorite parts:
When the AP did their recent poll on literacy, they found that one in four Americans didn’t read a book last year. I know a lot of people who found that news depressing, but my own reaction was more, “Rock! Three out of four people read a book last year!”…
So 25 out of 100 people didn’t read a book last year. At least one or two of them must not be able to read, right? (Note to self: look up American illiteracy rates) And then you have people who just don’t like to read. I’m not thrilled with that fact, but I’m at peace with it….
What I do find unnerving is that other poll from a year or so back that indicated 80% of Americans wanted to write a book. First of all, that means that at least 5% of people who want to write a book didn’t read one in the past year.
Rock on.
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