Yapping About Writing...

Come on over to the International Thriller Writers/THE BIG THRILL and join me in a roundtable discussion! Topic is "How do you separate yourself from the characters you write?" http://tinyurl.com/4rbhrxm It's happening right now, this week -- 3/21-27 -- RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND!!!!! Don't make me hear echoes!

Snoring, As Interpreted by Dreams

Last night The Husband had one of those nights-- you know, the kind where no matter how many times or how hard I poked him in the side, nudged him in the foot, smacked him upside the head (okay, not really, at least this time), he wouldn't stop snoring.  Generally, if I can get him to stop for just a few minutes, I'll fall asleep and just snooze right on through it.  But sometimes, like last night, there's an interesting combination of him being loud enough and me being too tired to wake up.  And this is what happened:

Ghoulie, our blind Great Dane, is an attention sponge.  Her world is tactile and she wants to be touched, talked to, and played with constantly.  When she isn't, or when she's forced to lie down and stay put (such as when we're trying to watch a movie on a weekend evening), she'll lie at our feet between the couch and the coffee table, and she'll growl.  I am not kidding.  The more frustrated she gets, the longer and louder she growls, until we literally can't hear the television and have to interject "Ghoulie, be quiet!"-- which is usually enough to stop her for about 40 seconds before we get to start all over again.  At 3:18 a.m. I stopped myself just short of sitting up and yelling that very phrase into Wes's ear, because he sounded just like her-- long, loud and growly-- and I truly believed the dog was fussing for attention in the middle of the darned night.

Somewhere around 4:30 a.m., the volume, pitch and duration changed to something like a wheezing sort of... whistling.  My dream-brain interpreted that sound as coming out of the mouth of a red-skinned velociraptor that was about the size of a Great Dane but had Rorschach-like black and white spots down the middle of its back.  I was hiding under the bed and this extinct dinosaur was scrabbling its way underneath it, trying to get to me.  I was trying to get away not because I was afraid of it, but because even though it was friendly (??!), it had three-inch teeth and about as much control over its jaw power as an eight-week-old Great Dane puppy, as in not much.  It just wanted to play and kept getting tangled up in the bedcoverings as it tried to catch me.  At the end of this debacle, during which I kept hollering to my mother (who's been gone for a number of years now), "Mom, make it stop!", it was on top of the bed, I was standing over it, and scratching its back.

Tonight: I'm putting duct tape over his nose.  End of problem.

Random Bits of Wednesday

* Sitting here watching Ghoulie run in her sleep, her legs and paws twitching and moving.  Today's Question of the Universe: Do blind dogs finally get to see the rabbit they chase in their dreams?

* On my Facebook page I posted a link to a YouTube video that shows a dog trainer giving CPR to a boxer that inexplicably collapsed and stopped breathing during a training session.  It's difficult to watch but very educational, and the emotional devastation takes a turn at precisely 1:47 in the video.

* Today UPS brought me a book, "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferriss.  My friend Liz Danforth posted about this book so I decided to check it out; like the awesome partner he is, The Husband saw it on my Amazon Wishlist and ordered it for me when he bought something for himself.  I plan on having a 4-hour workwork by next Tuesday.  We'll see how that works out, and if I'm living a life of leisure by then, I'll be sure to let everyone know.  ::ahem::

* Be sure to check out the great review of HIGHBORN over at Hellnotes (link below).  There's another fantastic review of HIGHBORN in the February issue of Locus Magazine, although, alas, that review is not available online.

FANTASTIC REVIEW OF HIGHBORN!

Where?  Right HERE, at Hellnotes.

Most startling quote: 

"Author Yvonne Navarro leaps onto a popular theme, and rides it like a seasoned jockey on a thoroughbred."

Let just say I'm surprised, because frankly, horses have always intimidated me.  Fourteen hundred pounds of muscle and flesh that never fails to simply want to get me OFF its back.  I've had them try to rear, rub me off on trees, and just flat take off.  I've never mastered the theory of "move-with-the-horse-rhythm," apparently preferring (without having been told this) to jar my brains out and bruise my butt by coming down when the horse's back goes up.

But hey, if someone wants to compare my writing to winning the Kentucky Derby (okay, so that might be a stretch...), that's great!

Tucson Festival of Books Schedule!

Check it out over at the Dark Redemption site.  Hey, I have to get people to go over there some whichaway, right?  :o)

And hey, while you going somewhere (you are, aren't you?), bop on over to Red Room and check out the impulse blog I just wrote: Spinning Around and Hitting the Circular Wall.

FRE FREE FREE!

Yes, it's yet another Giveaway.  Oh, okay... so there's an interview, too.  But it's got a cool picture on it that hasn't been much used in awhile, so why not take a look, fill out the form, and maybe get a free copy of HIGHBORN?  :o)  Go here:  My Bookish Ways