Category: The Adventures Of Cynical Woman

Ah, the thrill of the acceptance letter. For a writer, there is no greater thrill than knowing someone valued your work enough to put it in a book and pay you a whole $25 for it!

$25 is actually the going rate for many anthologies these days. Sometimes it’s a little more, occasionally it’s a bit less. Depends on the antho and the publisher. The most money I ever made off a story sale was $100, and that was way back in the days when PlayGirl was still paying $100 for the story of the month for its readers forum. Last I heard, that amount had dropped to (you guessed it) $25.

I don’t know of anybody who’s ever gotten rich off of anthology sales. I do know a few folks who have managed to make enough money to give up there day jobs off ebook and print book sales, but those folks are the exceptions, not the rule. Seriously, being a writer is not about the money. If you think it is, go look for another career. The people who make the big bucks like J.K Rowling and Stephen King are far and few between.

However, knowing that still doesn’t diminish the thrill of getting that acceptance letter. I’ve received two such letters in the past month, and one was for a charity anthology, which means I’ve donated my work and will be making no money off it at all. At least not for me. Here’s hoping my work is good enough to make life better for someone else.

I’ll post updates on these story acceptances as I get more details from the publishers. And remember, buy my books!

Me and driving in North Carolina do not mix.

Last week I unexpectedly left a day early for a four-day karate camp in Flat Rock, NC. I had planned on leaving early Thursday morning and arriving at noon in time for the start of camp. However, I was advised it was actually better to leave the night before, especially since I could check in early and there’d be a bunk already waiting for me at camp Wednesday night. One of the other black belts in my class, Eurica, decided to leave Wednesday too, so we decided to drive down together. Thus began our excellent adventure.

First off, the drive from home to Flat Rock was only supposed to take 7 1/2 hours. However, both Google and Yahoo maps gave me directions that would have forced me to make a turn every 15 minutes. Seriously? Do Google and Yahoo not understand that I do not have to reach around my ass to get to my armpit? MapQuest did a better job, and was easier to tweak to get the directions to match up with what I’d been told I’d need to do. So, armed with MapQuest, Eurica and I set out Wednesday around 2:45 PM for Flat Rock, NC.

I will be the first to admit, we were having a great time talking on our way down there. I usually see Eurica in class a couple times a week, but I never get a chance to talk to her because we’re both too busy doing karate. We talked about everything! Kids, husbands, the economy, getting older, the time I went to the wrong funeral… everything. And we were having so much fun! And it’s a good thing we were having fun, because that 7 1/2 hour trip ended up taking 12 hours!

The trouble started when we reached the Durham area around 6:30PM. Apparently there was a really bad accident on I-85S; so bad that the police closed all four lanes of the highway and redirected traffic into Durham. We didn’t have any idea of where we were going in Durham, and we ended up driving around the town for quite a long while. Fortunately, Eurica had a Google Maps app on her iPhone (for this and this only, I forgive Google for giving us such crappy directions when I planned our initial route). She was able to pinpoint our location and tell me which way to turn. But it ended up taking us 2 1/2 hours to get back onto the highway!

Then of course, we had to stop for dinner. We found this little hole-in-the-wall Chinese place that served the best food. It was cheap, delicious, and more than either of us could eat, and we were splitting a plate, so that tells you something. I seriously wish I had written down the name and address of the place so I could promote them here, but I didn’t. I did however leave a nice tip.

Then we got back on the road and discovered that there was construction and maintenance going on all over I-85S. We kept getting shifted from one lane to another, hitting this slow down and then that one. Around 10 PM, when we should have arrived in Flat Rock, we were still nowhere near our destination, and we kept debating whether we should get off and get a hotel room for the rest of the night. But then we realized we’d still have to get up extra early in the morning and drive the rest of the way and we had no idea how long it would take us to get there. Plus we had our instructor’s weapons in the back of the car, and he was going to need them to teach classes, so we had to be there on time.

We finally arrived at the camp at 2:45 AM, and I swear, if the instructor responsible for checking people in hadn’t been up waiting for late night stragglers like us, Eurica and I would have grabbed our blankets, leaned back our seats, and slept in the dang car! However, Sensei Meibers was up and he got us to our bunks in one of the cabins and we crashed some time around 3 AM.

Then we went through 3 straight days of karate classes, 8 hours per day. It was challenging to say the least. We were up in the mountains, on some really hilly, rocky terrain, which made balancing while doing kata fun. Plus it was extremely humid. The heat wasn’t too bad, but the humidity was absolutely killer. The bus weren’t too bad, which was good, but the cabins we were staying in were meant for pre-teens and younger kids, so everything was scaled to their size. We could barely stand up or turn around in the shower. The toilet had a shower curtain in front of it that was so close it was right up on my knees everytime I sat. Oh, and the toilet seat was very loose, so trips to the john always involved serious risk of falling into the toilet or out of the stall. Made life interesting.

However, camp turned out to be very enjoyable. Eurica and I learned a lot of fun stuff, and we were in great spirits when we got into the car Sunday morning to head home. You see, we had reviewed our directions with someone who had left 3 hours after us on Wednesday evening, and yet managed to arrive 1 hour ahead of us that night. After confirming our route, we hopped in the car and sped off, certain we would make it home in 7 1/2 hours.

We were doing pretty good too. Around Ashville, we got a call from our instructor recommending we take Route 40 Business through town to shave half an hour off our time. It’s because of this valuable piece of knowledge that we actually made it home in 11 1/2 hours instead of 12.

Yeah, 11 1/2 hours to get home. Honestly, I don’t know what happened. We were fine up until Durham. Then somewhere past there, we missed our turn off for Route 58. It wasn’t until we were in Petersburg that we realized what had happened. Fortunately, we were able to map a new route home on the spot, thanks to Eurica’s iPhone, and we only missed a few more turns after that. We did go through lovely, scenic Ivor, where they were selling hog jowls (god, I wish I’d stopped to get a jar of those; that would have been funny). And eventually, we pulled into Eurica’s driveway.

I managed to make it from Eurica’s house to mine without further incident, and collapsed into bed after pencilling today’s cartoon. Now I’ll be spending the rest of the week playing catch up with work, and looking forward to not going anywhere this weekend. One of these days, I’m going to make a trip down to North Carolina and not get lost or take twice as long to get where I’m going as I should. Until then, I’m thinking seriously of investing in some road maps and maybe a GPS and a survival kit, because I gotta tell you, that was one hell of a trip!

Thanks to Eurica though, we still had a lot of fun 😉

I swear to you, the hardest part of writing is not actually writing the story, but putting together the cover letter to the editor/publisher whom you want to BUY your story. I have spent weeks working on a piece, gotten it all polished and perfect, and then turned around and realized, “Oh crap! I have to write a cover letter too?”

Cover letters are quite frequently an editor’s or publisher’s first introduction to a writer, so they have to be done right. You have to include all the pertinent information in the letter without being too wordy and you have to sell your story in 50 words or less. After a few years of writing cover letters, I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of it, but still, every time I go to submit a story, it’s the same damn thing. I stare at the computer, its glowing screen blank except for the words, “Dear Editor…” and my mind is completely empty.

Part of my problem is that I quite frequently write stories that are not the norm. While I haven’t actually written the story in the cartoon above, I have written very similar tales. Imagine trying to sell an editor of a sci-fi erotica anthology on a story about an alien who collects and swaps genitals at flea markets for fun and profit. Or get them to buy a story about plants having sex in a Victorian garden, then devouring the gardener whole when he figures out what’s up. Yeah, that’s kind of tricky to explain in a cover letter. Still, I somehow manage to sell my stuff, and I continue to sell more stories every year so I must be doing something right.

My one bit of advice about cover letters? Don’t be an ass. Simple, polite, and concise always work best. I now know plenty of editors and publishers and have heard them gripe about cover letters enough to that you should never, ever start your cover letter with, “Dear Editor, I am submitting my masterpiece for your consideration…”

‘Nuff said.

Ah yes, chibi Helen. I honestly believe the only way I could possibly be any more evil is if I were cute. Then I could get away with all sorts of wickedness. My lack of cuteness is the only thing that stops me from ruling the universe.

Hope you like the chibi version of me. Before I headed out to Toronto, I picked up a manga workbook by Chris Hart and have slowly been working my way through it. When I came home, I showed it to Mich, who mentioned looking for a similar workbook on chibis. That led me to dig up the chibi book by Chris Hart, and so now I’m hooked on drawing little cuties doing evil things.

BTW, the line in the second panel should be, “This story needs MORE goats. And fudge ice cream.”

As for the fourth panel, if you’ve ever spent any time hunting for yaoi or hentai images on the net, you know what I mean. I don’t mean that I would write stories about chibis having sex, but if I were a chibi, I think I could get away with writing far more scandalous stories than I do now 😉 Not that my lack of cuteness is going to stop me from trying.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the cartoon. Sayonara!

Honesty compels me to confess that the above scene never actually happened on our trip to Toronto last week, and there’s a good reason for that. The kids know I would KILL them if they ever acted up this badly.

In fact, the kids’ good behavior was the second most-likely reason people stopped to talk to us while we were out and about touring the town last week. (My Vibram shoes were the first most-likely reason we would be stopped.) People noted that the girls seemed very pleasant, were quiet and well-behaved in public, and said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ with only a little prompting. Only once toward the end did I have to put anyone in time out for bad behavior, and that was when Pixie refused to hold my hand in the Royal Ontario Museum. She was getting antsy, and I prefer to keep a tight grip on her when she gets like that, since I know she could easily spin out of control otherwise. When she refused to hold hands and threw a tiny tantrum, I put her in the nearest corner for 2 minutes. It was amazing how many people stopped to applaud while we stood there. Apparently lots of people are tired of seeing kids behave badly in public.

I don’t blame them. I saw some attrocious behavior while we were out, and not just from kids. People touching museum exhibits that were clearly labeled “No Touching!” Kids hitting and kicking their parents when denied ice cream. Shouting and swearing in hotel hallways. I cannot believe people act like this. And every time I see such behavior, I turn to my girls and say, “If I ever catch either of you acting like that–“

“You’ll kill us,” they finish for me.

“Exactly.”

So my girls know the score – behave or die young. I am very proud of them for understanding that concept.

Anyway, we had quite the vacation. This is our usual yearly trip, where Hubster jets us all out to whever his annual geek conference is, drops us in some strange city and then takes off for the week while I tote the girls around town. It’s both thrilling and exhausting. While he’s hob-nobbing with other engineers, I’m dragging two kids from museum to museum and trying to unpuzzle the local public transportation system. We didn’t do too badly this time. I was actually able to figure out which trolley I needed to take to get back to our hotel one afternoon when the bus we were supposed to take never showed up. However, I tried to stick to my prefered mode of transport – walking. The girls and I must have logged 2 miles a day, not including time spent at the various sites we visited. And of course, once the Hubster was done with his conference, that mileage doubled. That man likes to pack a lot of activities into his vacation time, I tell you. We walked so much the last two days of the trip, I still can’t feel my feet.

We got back on Sunday afternoon. It was an amazing trip and honestly, I could have spent 2 weeks there and not done it all. Among other places, we saw the Ontario Science Center, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Casa Loma, the Ontario Zoo, and the Royal Ontario Museum. Now that we’re home, I’m trying to slip right back into work and the usual routine. I can’t believe how much paying work I’ve got sitting in my in-box, waiting to be handled. And the laundry! Oy, I may never dig out from under that heap of work.

Anyway, I may do a few more cartoons on Toronto before moving back to some other topic, just to give you all a feel for what it was like. I hope you enjoy.

Oh, I have had my hands full keeping the kids busy this summer. Yes, Princess has actually asked about this. In fact, I keep getting all sorts of requests for odd activities. Can we go to Disney World… tomorrow! Can we buy a pony, build a giant robot, sew a ninja costume, and go to the beach? Sadly, getting to the beach has been the hardest request to fulfill so far this summer.

I’m still dead tired after my weekend reading in North Carolina. You can usually tell the weeks I’m tired or overly busy because I draw a single panel cartoon with a simple punch line, like the one above. I keep a stock pile of ideas on hand for when these times occur, so that I can still get a cartoon turned out, regardless of how sleep-deprived I might be. And I do try to ensure the cartoons are still funny. But if you see that single panel with just the essentials drawn, chances are good that I was worn out that day.

There will be no cartoon next week. Sorry, but we’ll be in Toronto and I’ll have no way to get a cartoon done in advance of heading out on our trip. I do plan to take a sketch book and my brush pen with me, so I might draw something, photograph it and upload it while I’m traveling, but I make no guarantees. Basically, it’s going to be me schlepping two kids around town while Hubster does his rocket scientist thing all day, and that’s both time consuming and exhausting.

But hopefully I’ll have more than a single panel to show you when I get back. And if you get a simple one panel cartoon instead? Well heck, ya’ll expect me to be tired after a trip like that, don’t you?

Oh, beware the horrific thingies that live in the toilet. For surely your child will find one and present it to you when you least expect it. Like say, right before you’re about to eat dinner.

I don’t know what Princess found in the toilet that evening, and I never intend to ask. Hubster does not recall the incident, so I figure whatever it was, it was so awful he wiped it from his memories. I personally don’t need that kind of brain damage. My kids have fried enough of my synapses as it is already.

We’ve had quite a few adventures with the pottie. There was the time I accidentally flushed a pair of Pixie’s “Little Mermaid” underpants down the toilet. Then there was the time we were in the best pizza parlor in all of Chicago and Pixie handed me a turd she’d just pooped out… right there at the table. I suppose that event is still worse than last week’s brain-exploding incident, wherein I caught Pixie fishing around in an unflushed toilet with her bare hands because she “wanted to see what it felt like.” Both Pixie and Princess got in trouble for that one; Pixie for playing in the toilet and Princess for forgetting to flush.

Yes folks, beware the dangers that lurk in the toilet. Surely there are no greater horrors than those involving kids and the potty.

I still got it, though I end up paying for it the next morning if I use it these days.

The B-52s came to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg this weekend, and we all went; me, the Hubster, Princess, and Pixie. Plus Mich and her folks went as well. Busch has an outdoor venue, and it was hotter than blazes when the concert started at 6PM, but that didn’t stop yours truly from dancing like a maniac. As I told my girls, you tell the B-52s you love them by dancing! And I had a lotta love to show Sunday evening.

The concert was fantastic. They played both old and new stuff, and had fun with a lot of their popular songs, including Luv Shack, Planet Claire, and Rock Lobster. Plus they did a few songs from the new album, Funplex, which I am now waiting to get from Amazon. The title track, Funplex, is actually one of the songs on Just Dance, so the girls know that one. In fact, Pixie likes to dance around the house singing, ” Wooohooo, pa-pa-pa at the Funplex!” One of these days, she might actually learn the lyrics!

Anyway, as to my “cosmic thang.” When Fred Schneider III tells you to get up and shake it, you shake it. And I shook mine like a bowl full of jelly! And thus the next morning I could barely walk. I actually got up before the kids did by about an hour, but whereas they could run around and play, yours truly just dragged all day long. I don’t care. I had a great time, and I got a really cool concert t-shirt too:

How’s that for neato-keen?

I still got it, baby. And I’m gonna shake it till I die.

From right to left, this was me, my best friend Mary, Pixie, Princess and Mary’s son (whom I call Spud Boy!) yesterday at Water Country, a ginormous water park that is the only amusement park I will willing attend. In general, I despise amusement parks; the long lines, the crowds, the over-priced greasy food, the stomach-churning rides, the HEAT! I much prefer museums, zoos, and gardens; places where I can learn things and I don’t have to stand in line or deal with a ton of cranky sweaty people who are pissed off because they paid WAAAAAAAAY too much money to get into the place and now their favorite ride is broken down.

And of course, I hate amusement parks because I used to work at one when I was a lowly teen. The only thing worse than going to an amusement park is working in one. Trust me on this.

But Water Country is different, mainly because it has water, which helps with the whole sweaty-heat problem. And also because I’ve yet to go there when it’s really crowded. It’s big, with plenty of things to do that don’t involve standing in line (though you can stand in some lines if you want to). Oh, and Water Country has no stomach churning puke-mixing rides. It does have a number of slides that make the Winter Olympics slalom look like a ride in the park, but that’s different. Those slides don’t totally screw with my inner ear and thus make me want to toss all my cookies when I get off. (I did enough tossing of cookies week before last, thanks.)

So Mary, the kids and I hit Water Country today and we had a great time. We started at the wave pool then made our way around to various play areas. Pixie is scared of anything new these days, and didn’t want to set foot in the water, so I had to make her, but once she was in she was fine. After about 2 1/2 hours of splashing around, we hit everybody’s favorite attraction, the Hubba-Hubba Highway, which is basically a long winding course of swift moving current that people float along in. We all strapped into life jackets and just went with the flow. It was very relaxing, and it made me think this is pretty much how I’d like the rest of summer to be – just go with the flow and relax. We’ll see if that happens.

There will probably be more of these “snapshots of summer” cartoons. I know everybody likes the funny stuff, but the girls are at an age where summer is becoming interesting and memorable, and I’d like to capture some of those moments while I can. Hope you’ll all indulge me when these cartoons turn up.