I've caught the fame bug.

Cue David Bowie's song "Fame", or if you prefer, the theme song from "Fame" the movie and TV show. After Saturday's interview on blog spot radio, I have the fame bug bad. I want more interviews and more chats. Apparently my enthusiasm came through, because Chai said that my interview had the highest listenership they'd ever had.

The questions they asked me were deep and insightful. When I'd read the questions before, I questioned that the show could be kid-friendly. But I tried my best to answer in such as way as to enable the young listeners to relate to what we were talking about. For example, when I talked about Fried Brain Syndrome, I talked about that feeling you get when you've been studying for an exam, or working on a research paper, and you've taken the exam or turned in the paper. Your brain is fried, you have tunnel vision, and you need a way to open and relax your mind.
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The last question I found extremely flattering. It was the stock one about what advice I'd give to young aspiring writers. My advice was threefold. 1. Write. 2. Do your homework. The study habits you pick up will stand you in good stead researching a story. 3. Read voraciously.

The glow has dissipated a bit, but I still have good feelings about it. I'm hoping I keep this good feeling about being interviewed about my writing. Doc was thrilled for me, and so proud that the buttons on his shirt popped off.

Mop-up and Promo

Somewhere someone got the idea that I was complaining about the interviews Peggy and Chai have set up for me. If so, they just don't get me at all. Complain? Never! I think it's great. Chai has been working very hard to set up suitable venues for me to showcase my art. It can't be an
easy job coddling us writers. We're temperamental and have all the worst traits of an artist. We have big egos that like to be massaged on a regular basis. I love both Chai and Peggy to bits, although I'd like them to stay intact.

I'm pretty excited about Saturday's interview. It is on blogtalkradio.com/puddlepeople. The time is 10 am for us westerners here on the left coast, 11 am for those in the Mountain Time Zone, 12 noon for those in the Central time zone, and 1:00 pm for those in the East. It will be a kid-friendly interview. But the questions will be deep, and I think adults will get a lot out of it too. I had a look at the questions, and they got into the mythic background of my characters, so I think I should post to the Joseph Campbell group too.

I think publishing is fun work and very interesting. If tomorrow when I woke up I found myself being 18 again, and trying to decide what to do with my life, I think I would try to find a school that would teach me about publishing. And I would also write and try to get my work published. As it stands, I like to get my work published. I think that's the agenda for any writer. We all want to get our stuff out there. And the Internet is a great medium to work in. I don't know how anyone can be bored with all that the Internet has to offer. I've been on it almost 11 years, and I haven't gotten anywhere close to having even scratched the surface yet.

My new books

After I went through that blogging frenzy on Friday, I reflected that I was missing a good bet where these blogs are concerned. I should be using them to promote my books, so here I am. Since September, when last I posted here, I moved to a new publisher. It opened on January 31st with three new releases, a child's book, a young adult Scifi novel (ages 13-17), and an adult erotic romance. The young adult book is mine, Takuhi's Dream, and it is particularly close to my heart because it is the first novel I actually finished. The three stories I published with Silk's Vault came years after Takuhi's Dream, a couple decades, really. I started it in 1974, and finished it in 1982, a few weeks after my daughter, now 26, was born. When I heard that my favorite editor, Peggy, aka the Dragonlady, was starting a new publishing house, FireDrakes Weyr, I submitted Takuhi's Dream to her. She liked it, and had several suggestions for me. She turned me over to another editor, and we worked together to get it up to speed. We turned it into a Young Adult book. Diane Taylor, Stacy Dawn and I were on a web radio show the Sunday before.

Takuhi's Dream is about a young woman, who is a kulturologist, a kind of ethnographer, who is being pursued around the galaxy by a monster she cannot face, and two men, one of whom means her harm, and the other one--well, you'll just have to download the story and find out.
Go to http://www.firedrakesweyr.com/ and do a search on me, Rita Trevalyan. Takuhi's Dream will come up. There is an excerpt from the book and everything. Sure, it's a young adult book, and you're 35 with teenagers of your own, but hey, look at all the adults who are buying the Harry Potter books and reading them, and they were written for children.

It might still be with the new releases. If you wait more than a week, on March 1st there will be
a new release by me, Roman Rhapsody. It is the story of a wealthy, happily married forty-two year old woman who nevertheless is mired in a sea of ennui, and is having dreams of disturbingly erotic content about a relationship between a Roman matron and a gladiator. Can she integrate those dreams with her real life? You'll have to read the story to find out.

I guess Peggy is called the Dragonlady because she is such a fierce advocate for the reader's right to read a story that is the best an author can turn out. It all depends how you look at dragons. Sure, they're fierce, but they are also loyal and passionate. Peggy is a sweetheart, really. She knows how to coddle an author and in the same breath crack the whip so as to inspire the author to turn out her best work. I just know that when I meet her I'm going to want to give her a big hug.

Blocked again

I've got writer's block, and even burning orange candles to Mercury and burning benzoin incense aren't doing it. My vampire character isn't talking to me, telling me what I should write. I'd write the end of the story but then I'll be tempted to curtail the rest of the story and rush towards a conclusion, and that isn't what I want to do at all. I want to develop the story, build suspense, and have it be a true modern gothic novel. I suppose at some point I'll be going back to the textbooks, doing exercises in my book on description and setting that I started reading while in Idaho. Every story is a learning curve for me. I learn with every story I write. I also learn during revision. I may even go back to the literature, and read about vampires. Time to return to basics.

Fried, in desperate need of a cat

I just turned in a story to my editor, and am hot in the middle of a bad case of Fried Brain Syndrome. The only cure I've discovered to work is to stroke a cat's fur. Somehow that
tends to calm me down and open my mind. When I'm working towards a deadline, I tend to get a kind of tunnel vision. I eat, sleep, and live my story. That is being a writer. I know it's weird, but I'm weird. I've been weird all my life. But back to Fried Brain Syndrome, or also known as FBS, my friends in Redding have a treatment for it that works. It's a game of how many kittens can we fit on your lap? Kittens are good because they're basic. They aren't intellectual. All they want out of life is food, water, a place to sleep, the occasional dangly toy to bat around the room, and a hand to scritch them, and stroke their fur. Give them attention and they purr. I'm convinced that the sound of a cat's purr will lower a human's blood pressure. That's what I need right now.

Trees are Absolutely Essential for Human Life

This blog isn't exactly about publishing or about writing. It is about something even more important. It is about trees, and their value to all of life. They shelter smaller plants that are used by humans for food and medicines. Farmers use trees to divide one field from another, and stop the fierce winds that whistle across the plains. But much more basically, trees provide, just by being, like all other green plants, most of the oxygen we need to live. We get fruit and nuts from them. They attract lightning so that we will be spared. Where would we be without trees? I think that if there were trees in Somalia and Ethiopia, there would not now be millions starving to death. They could just pick fruits and nuts from the trees and eat. Manna, as it was described in the Judeo-Christian Bible, came from a tree. I believe it was the tamarisk tree, which dripped a sweet sticky syrup that the children of Israel lapped up. Trees play a key part in the mythology. There were trees in the fabled Garden of Eden. The mystical Jews study the Tree of Life in Qabalah. Shamans climb a tree in order to go to the different worlds, down for the Underworld, in the middle for the Middle World, with which we are most familiar, and up to journey in the Upper World, to visit with the deities, and other Upper World beings. The Germans and the Norse have Yggdrasil, the World Ash Tree, which pointed the way to all nine of the Germanic and Norse worlds. We use trees for countless purposes; building materials, paper, furniture, and many other uses. The Native Americans and early settlers used the bark of the birch tree as paper. Trees trap soil that would ordinarily be washed away in erosion. They also hold moisture in the soil. They prevent dangerous landslides. What else can I say about trees and how important, how vital they are? This blog is by no means exhaustive. It is only to get you, my readers to thinking about trees, and talking about trees, and how important they are to all life.

When we last left our heroine.....

Since my first blog was written, two more of my stories have been published. One is Arianrhod's Bracelet, and the other is Yule Yelps [The Fattigman Files], and the process of creation continues. I had my 60th birthday in January, and thought about how my life has progressed. Why couldn't I have done this 20 years ago? This is great. I don't plan ever to retire. As long as I can apply fingers to keyboard I plan on writing. There are a lot more stories inside of me rarin' to get out. I'm afraid I was a little hard on the editor who edited my holiday story, sorry, Pam. Hopefully, I won't be so pressed for time when my next one gets to the final edit. Right now I'm working on what I hope will be the ultimate vampire novel. The idea came to me just before Yule, and certain signs and omens told me that I should be writing this novel. On December 23rd, of all times, there was a program on the History Channel about vampires. Then after the holidays we saw a show on the SciFi Channel on the historic Dracula. I started brainstorming with snoodlady about it. I also brainstormed about it with Doc on the way to the covenstead at Yule. I made some notes when we got back home. I've been working on it ever since.