April.....fools?

So hi

What's been going on?

I hope you are well

Because. Um. Yeah. Lots going wrong in the world, isn't there?

I'm happy to report, for my part, that while the library is closed, my coworkers and I all still have jobs. Many of us even have job duties that we can still perform from home. This is a privilege that I am VERY thankful for; I feel unbelievably lucky.

And we're seeing now just how much libraries can still do from home. There are digital escape rooms, there are livestreamed storytimes (with many publishers and children's book authors generously saying "yes, it's okay to read my books for these." Many ebook lending restrictions have been lifted, and I know at my library, Hoopla, our newer streaming service, has been wildly popular. Run With the Hunted, et al will eventually be added to Hoopla...Draft2Digital started that process back in like, November, and I think both services were unprepared for how many people were gonna say yes all at once.

One of those work-from-home things is my writing group. We've just had a big email ol' email chain, that I kick off each Saturday with a collection of writing prompts, and people who feel up to it send back what they came up with. I've been working on a short story in this way, bit by bit, prompt by prompt. I'm not really sure how it will end up, but that's taking shape. It's interesting to write in that way, letting people read it as you go, instead of after you've ironed out the wrinkles and tacked down the edges and done things like give people names (....whoops...)


I've been putting the prompts on my Patreon, for free. And I'm going to link the ones I've got so far right here:

Digital Writing Group! Prompts, volume 1
Digital Writing Group! Prompts, volume 2
Digital Writing Group! Prompts, volume 3
Digital Writing Group! Prompts, volume 4
Digital Writing Group! Prompts, volume 5
Digital Writing Group! Prompts, volume 6

In addition to that, I've been working on Run With the Hunted 3: subtitle to be determined, and making satisfactory progress on that. I've even got a coveer in the works! So I'll let you know here, and everywhere, when there are pre-orders for that.

I also plan to do an omnibus that collects the first three novellas under one roof, as it were. I'm thinking hardcover AND paperback for that, which means I'll be wrangling with the Ingram book formatting program. So that'll be a new experience! And then I'll  need a cover for THAT too. So...any suggestions would be welcome!

And last but not least, I've had two short stories published so far this year! The first is "For Thine is the Kingdom", which appeared in Truancy in January. The second is "Black Market Cheerios", which appeared in Lamplight Volume 8, Issue 2, in March.

For news along these lines,  you can subscribe to my TinyLetter, which I send out with slightly more frequency than I blog anymore (I used to blog a lot...I guess now you can tell that I'm writing more!)

Stay safe out there. Stay home if you can. It's a great time for reading, and for writing, if you can. Or baking bread, as so many people are doing. Or cross stitch or doing the plank challenge or binging everything you never got around to on various streaming services.

Until next time!

Mosaics 2 now available!

I announced my acceptance into Mosaics 2: a Collection of Independent Women back in February, and the time has finally come. It's here, it's here!

The Kindle date still appears to be May 1, but if you want to order the paperback, you could have it by Wednesday! Isn't it lovely, sometimes, to be living in The World of Tomorrow?

My included story is "The Lion and the Dragonslayer": when the village of Orford asked for help with a dragon, they didn't expect the king to send a woman, no matter how big her sword is.

(I was particularly pleased with my little story blurb there; I typically struggle quite a lot with producing an interesting summary of literally anything, much less what I've written.)

In conjunction with this publication, I've created a Goodreads author profile . I hope to see titles of other anthologies, and my own books, attached to it pretty soon!

Obviously, I encourage you to get the Kindle or paperback of Mosaics 2 (or get it from your local library! And request that your library orders it; mine is, as volume 1, anyway, was available through the book distributor Ingram) and I also encourage (entreat?) you to review it on Goodreads and/or Amazon. Every time you review a book, an author gets its wings. Or something.

There is no party like a Goldberg party

Me: Have you heard of Resting Bitch Face? I pretty much definitely have that.
Newest Coworker: I haven't heard of that. I feel like I have resting Morose face, but I'm not a morose person.
Me: Well, on Tuesday, a friend accused me of having Resting Judgement Face.
~~~~~~~~~~~Later~~~~~~~~~~~~
Newest Coworker: Oh, I see it now. I think what you have is Judging Bitch Face


(oh, apparently it's actually "Bitchy Resting Face", not Resting Bitch Face. Fucking whatever.)


"Look honey, we came to the Barrens to choke a bitch." ~ From the Shadowrun game


Me: I had my first Irish Car Bomb on St. Patrick's Day!
Coworker: I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. I thought you said car bomb?
Me: I....I did. It's a drink.


Coworker: Oh watch, now you get to see Jen go be mean, you haven't seen this yet.

Digital Vatican

You may or may not be aware, the Vatican is digitizing its collections.

Think about this a moment.

There are things in the Vatican collections which are entirely unique. Hundreds of years old. Fascinating and beautiful and even, dare I say, education and/or informational. And they're digitizing it. I cannot begin to describe my joy. 4000 manuscripts. It's too much to ever get to, I'm sure, but it's there and I'm happy. It's one of those things I think about sometimes; the Vatican contains so much history, which hardly anybody is able to scratch the surface of. Access is limited (though I confess I don't know the full details of this. I'm sure scholars are permitted to do research there. I'm sure showing up at the Vatican and saying "let me in, I'm Catholic!" though true, would not just let me in.)

The Oxford library (the Bodlein Library specifically) has also made some of its super old manuscripts available online, for free.

Another fantastically amazing religious book which is available to view online now is the Gigas Codex, which translates to "Giant Book", but is also referred to colloquially as the Devil's Bible. It's the "real" Bible, as it were, in Latin [of varying dialects], but also contains a big huge picture of the devil, and then other non-Christian-Bible style documents. Oh yeah, and legend has it that it was written by a monk who traded his soul to the Devil so the book would be finished in one night, like some kind of fucked up Christmas Carol. National Geographic did a neat documentary on it, and it really is a huge book. Like, coffee table sized.

Pope Francis actually puts quite a lot of emphasis on the Devil, mentioning him in speeches fairly frequently. I confess I haven't really paid attention to prior popes' speeches, so I'm not familiar with all of the content. It could be that secular media are just blown away that we Catholics still believe in such things, I don't know. This year in May was the 9th annual Exorcism and Prayer for Liberation conference in Rome, and Pope Francis has only been pope since 2013, so clearly the Devil has still been in mind.

Though I don't think you need me to tell you I think Pope Francis is a rock star. Calling out a Bishop for spending millions on his official residence? Not picking up the red leather shoes the former Pope Benedict had made for him? Auctioning his own Harley (and leather jacket) for charity?

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

A thing I run into quite frequently (read: daily) at the library is a fear of genre. It's okay to have your reading preferences; I certainly do. Myself, I don't read a whole lot of mysteries. It doesn't mean I won't, but rather they aren't the books getting my attention. We all are more than allowed to make those choices. But what really gets me is people making those decisions without having ever even put a toe outside their comfort zone, or people making those decisions even when it's an author they're familiar with.

For example, Dean Koontz has his Odd Thomas books, right? One of them came out at a graphic novel and only as a graphic novel. Patrons who reserved it by merit of it being Dean Koontz and Odd Thomas, like you do. An unmeasured percentage of them, once they saw it was a "comic book", said "Oh, I don't want that" with a particular wrinkling of the nose and returned it unopened. Didn't even leave the building with it.

John Grisham has a series based around Theodore Boone, a 13 year old lawyer. Across the libraries in my system, that might be shelved in Young Adult or might be shelved in Juvenile (what we call MG). People come in asking for the new Grisham, or for that Grisham in particular, and when they find out it's "for kids", there's that nose wrinkle again. By the way, J is where we shelve our Harry Potter and Y is where our Hunger Games are, and people will check those out, typically after they've seen the movie. Seeing that currently with the Veronica Roth Divergent books.

We actually have a display right now, of subgenres, inspired by a conversation I had with a patron who was taking out Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, and had never heard of Steampunk. She didn't end up liking it, but I thought it was cool she was interested and willing to give it a try. There are people who come in looking for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and when they discover it's a mystery, some don't take it. There are people who come in looking for Ray Bradbury, or Ursula LeGuin, and are put off when those are in the Fantasy and Science Fiction section.

There are the people who think Fantasy and Science Fiction should be shelved separately, because they aren't the same thing. There are people who are confused (I'm in this camp) by the fact that we shelve vampires, zombies, and Neil Gaiman in the regular fiction.

We have limited space at my library, and the catalogers aren't all familiar with genre. But it genre an all or nothing prospect? I don't think so. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, say, doesn't necessarily belong in the Fantasy/SciFi section, but he could fit there. Ray Bradbury could be comfortably shelved with the "regular" (literary and commercial) fiction. The time travel romances (with or without highlanders, but really, why are there so many Scottish Highland time travel romances? When did that become a Thing?) aren't in the SciFi, nor is H.G. Wells, but we have one Lovecraft there and the other in regular fiction.

I kind of wish my library would actually just Dewey Decimilize the whole damn thing. Just assign each book its number and let people look for it by merit of that, not by the fast-and-loose genre categorizing we're currently doing. You want fiction? It's in the 800's, then look for the author's last name. Done.

Smutception

Look, a Fifty Shades Generator! (totally raunchy and ridiculous and NSFW or whatever the hell. But if you're online at work, I salute and envy you. I can kind of go online at work, but it's mostly to look at stuff on Amazon [for when people are all "I'm looking for a book. I don't remember the title or author. The cover might be blue? It came out last year. Maybe it has 'nights' in the title'?" Some of these I magically know {the above is Blue Nights, by Joan Didion}, but seriously people? If you don't remember anything about it, how the fuck do you know you want to read it? Pick something else! AT RANDOM. It'll be just as good. Or bad. {But that reminds me, I wanted to read Slouching Towards Bethlehem by her. So thanks, guys!}])


(You can rent paperbacks on Amazon? Oh what the hell. Go to the fucking library.)

Library Quotes

Small child in the picture book room: Where's *insert the children's librarian's name here* Hey!
Coworker: Should we tell her *children's librarian* went home?
Me: Nah, she'll figure it out. It's the Suzuki method.
Coworker: Tell me again why you're not going to grad school.

A patron: well, my eyes are going, but I only need to see hot men and large print books. 


Coworker: So, you read about serial killers and things. Do you have, like, a favorite serial killer?
Me: Not really
Coworker is visibly relieved. 
Coworker: Well,  is there one you read about more than the others?
Me: What, for pointers? No.

Coworker: Do you have any gum?
Me:  Yeah, it's on my shelf under the Titanic.
Coworker: Because where else would it be.
Me: It's Dentyne Ice, isn't it?



Me: Hey, if you Google Maps "Sedan Crater" you can see the nuclear bomb craters at the Nevada Test Site!
Coworker: What is wrong with you?

View Larger Map

 Male Coworker: I'm surprised you haven't killed like, fourteen people by now.
Me: What, me personally, or the two of us?
Male Coworker: You personally.

Coworker to me: I'm surprised you don't know how to hotwire a car.

Things that happened since I posted here last

So, since I posted here last (July 11, if you're keeping track!)

I turned 30 (I'm rather ambivalent about this, and that topic will be a post in and of itself. I promise.)

There was a fight in the library gazebo (no, it didn't involve me really in any way. but it was certainly an event!)

I totally forgot about the August CampNaNoWriMo Until like, August 4. So, another fail. November will be better, right? Right.

I watched the movie Chronicle. Which was freaking awesome. I recommend it, definitely.

I rewatched original Fantasia. Elka watched it with me, at least the beginning part, which is mostly shapes and colors.

I've worked on editing a short story anthology that I intend to publish through Amazon.

I made pancakes on my own from scratch for the first time. I'm not typically a pancakes kind of gal. I'd made pancakes before in the past, but mostly as the flipper, without having a hand in the rest of the process.

No, your library isn't trying to screw you

I'm surprised sometimes at the level of suspicion that some people have.

At my library, the overdue fine for books is 25 cents a day. That is per item, per day. Maximum of $5 for a book. No limit on book checkouts, they go for 3 weeks with no renewals if nobody else is waiting for them. And oh yes, we, the library, did have to pay money in order to get those books from Magical Book Land and place them on our shelves for you, the public, to check out. We, the library, also have to Pay Money for electricity, light bulbs, Internet, computers, printers, paper, phone, and natural gas. We also have to Pay Money for gasoline to put in the tractor that mows the grass and plows the snow and performs other groundskeeping duties.

Sometimes, people take out a lot of books. And they...forget about them. Not for a long time, maybe a week. Not so bad, right? Sometimes fines total out at $3, sometimes $10, that kind of thing. I've seen far larger, and far smaller as well. It's funny, because sometimes somebody will ride me like a rented mule over a seventy five cent fine (that's 3 days, mind you. 3 days. Pocket change. You could find it in the parking lot), and another person will have a fine of $240 for a bajillion late books and just ask me serenely who they make the check out to.

And oh, the comments we get.

"Oh, I guess I'd better just start buying my books. It'll be cheaper." We hear this one a lot. Daily, in fact. That $25.00 hardcover latest James Patterson would have been cheaper to buy than your $1.25 fine? Really?

"I'm paying taxes for this place!" Yeah, so am I. About $120 a year. I own my house in town, you see. Do you know how many books I could buy, new, for $120 a year? Let's be generous and say twelve, at a mix of paperbacks and hardcovers. You know how many books I read a year? Around 100. Sometimes more. Oh yeah, we have DVDs too. One week, no renewal, $1 a day if they're late. You can take 5 at a time. 5 DVDs, depending, is $120. You got your money's worth, I assure you. I've sometimes considered offering people the cash in exchange for a notarized statement saying they won't come back.

"It must be nice to sit around and read all day!" Yeah, it must be nice. Because I don't. I check books out, check books in. I turn the computer monitor back on for people (is it really that hard, not to touch a computer monitor?) I answer the phone and then do Google searches for people for directions, or phone numbers, or to spell words. Or to tell them celebrity birthdates and parents' names. I clean your greasy fingerprints off of CDs and DVDs. I clean mystery crud off of CD and DVD cases. Yeah, we have books on CD as well. They're $120 each for a library copy. Limit of six. Like a book, though, it's three weeks, two renewals, 25 cents a day overdue fine.

"Don't you have a grace period?" Yeah. You checked out your book for a week and have a two week grace period. Seriously. If you can't finish five books in three weeks...don't take five books. If you can't finish one book in 9 weeks (that's what one checkout plus two renewals equals) then maybe you should, in fact, buy it.

"Why can't I take my laptop bag/giant purse/suitcase/duffel bag with me through the library?" Well, people are scumbags and steal our stuff. So, because books and things cost money and not candy, we lose a lot of money yearly from people stealing. So we need to politely treat people with large bags like scumbags who might steal from us. No, we don't want to check your stuff when you're done. Yes, I know your laptop bag contains your laptop and that's why you came here.

I was stealth evangelized by a twelve year old

So, at the library the other day, I helped a younger patron, a boy I'd say was twelve or so. He finished his transaction, efficiently and politely (which is more than I can say for some adults I deal with, certainly), adjusted his HUGE backpack, and rested his hand on the counter briefly. Then he looked at me and said "That's for you" and left.

I looked at the counter, and thought "did that kid just give me ten dollars?", a "lol wut?" moment if ever there was one. Then I picked it up. It was a Billion Dollar Bill.

I was amused, and then confused, as I examined the item further. One of the little seals on the front says "Thou shalt not covet". Ooh, he got me. I wanted money. Then I turned it over. Apparently, I'm going to hell.