Woke up today at four a.m. and for the first time in about three months the glands in my neck aren’t swollen to the size of golf balls.

Thank God!

I feel like I might actually live a few more years. I have had a somewhat nasty infection for the past several months, I guess. I haven’t been sleeping well, and I was beginning to feel like I might die. You know how you get from lack of sleep—all paranoid. (Or is that just me? Surely it’s not just me. Why are you all looking at me funny? It’s not that weird. You all just love to judge me!)

You also get befuzzled when you don’t get enough sleep.

I’ve been working on a book and having a hard time seeing my way through. But this morning, in the wee hours, I felt so danged good when I woke up, I came up with a title right away. I’d spent hours yesterday and had nothing! Here’s what I came up with today:

THE WOLF IN TINKERS’ ALLEY

What do you think? Does that do anything for you?

I played with several others…

hey…let’s take a vote!

I must be able to add a nifty poll to my WordPress blog.

Ah, yes, here we go:

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Thanks!

Of course if you don’t like wolves…we’re out of luck. Any variations you think would work better? Feel free to leave a comment.

My task for today is to come up with a one-paragraph synopsis. This is proving difficult even for the new, vigorous, back-in-the-land-of-the-living writer sitting here in my chair.

Hmm. Maybe I need a nap.

Oh well. For now, I’ll just be happy about all the shiny new title possibilities…and the glands that have gone from golf-balls to grapes.

Do you think wolves are overdone? You can never have too many evil wolves, can you?

OK, what about you. What’s the working title of your WIP?

Many years ago, my family and I traveled, via three boats, from Taiwan to the US. On one of the boats we spent a month, and on that boat there was a women who was having some mental problems. During the dinner hour, she would chew wildly and talk with her mouth full, speaking out very loudly, saying bizarre things.

Her behavior was especially bizarre when contrasted with the way the crew acted. The boat was a French vessel with a French purser and French sailors and waiters, who always spoke politely in very proper English.

My dad, being the loving preacher-man that he was, always made a point of talking to the “crazy lady,” as we called her, while most of the passengers gave her a wide berth.

One night she went off big time. She balanced on one foot while she poured water into a cup. She lost her balance and ended up face-first in one of her table mate’s plates.

The purser decided that was enough. He came to ask her to follow him.

She said in a loud, shrieking voice, “Work, work, work. All I do is work. All day, all night, all I do is work.”

The purser said in his very proper voice, “Really, Madame, and what is your work?”

“Eating!” she shrieked out.

She took off running, then, and the men—passengers and staff—chased her and finally trapped her in a stairway. The purser picked her up and carted her to the infirmary.

I was only six years old, but the memory never died, because all my life, a favorite saying in our family has been, “Work, work, work. All I do is work. All day, all night, all I do is work.”

So I remembered that today, when I thought, “Hmm, it’s been almost a month since I last posted on my poor, neglected blog.”

What have I been doing? Work, work, work. All I do is work.

I’ve been working on a MG novel. And I posted over on Novel Rocket. I talked about how to make living, breathing secondary characters. Please go read over there if that’s a topic that interests you.

Mostly, though, the reason I’m not posting often here is that I’m working on my speeches for my Toastmaster’s club. I’m doing one every two weeks and it’s not easy coming up with brilliant speeches on that schedule. Not only do I have to write them, I have to memorize them. I have to add new skills each time, too—this coming week I’m using a Power Point, so that’s a whole new skill I’m learning.

So…work, work, work. All I do is work. All day, all night, all I do is work.

What about you all? What have you been up to? Writing? What will be your work, work, work this summer? And what phrases do you have in your families, that you picked up from a book or a real life situation?  For years I called my mom Mamsie and she called me Phronsie. We picked that up from The Five Little Peppers. Another one we always said came from Robin Hood. We had a recorded version—a 78 record—and when Robin, dressed as a beggar, hit the bullseye with his arrow, the Sheriff exclaimed, “Yoiks, what a beggah!” So that’s what we always say in our family, whenever anyone does something well. Wouldn’t it be cool to write a book and have a phrase from it come into wide use in the world?

Meet Martyr, a young man who knows very little about the world. He’s been created to save the world, or so he’s been told, and he’s willing to sacrifice his life to do that. He’s fast coming up on his “expiration date” and he’s ready to go peacefully. What he doesn’t understand is why he can’t see the sky one time before he dies.

His longing for the a glimpse of the world outside the lab/facility/farm where he lives underground, is so real and so pathetic (and I mean that in the good way—he’s pathetic and he makes me sympathetic). If you felt for poor Harry Potter, living under the stairs, and getting a broken hanger and a pair of his uncle’s old socks for his birthday, consider poor Martyr, who has never seen the sky.

And he’s such a nice boy.

Martyr, the star of Jill Williamson’s Replication, lives in a horrible place, full of lies and hopeless boys and sadistic “doctors” doing things that ought not be done to human beings.

The horrible place is inside of a wonderful place—Alaska. Jason Farms could have been right near the house I lived in for twenty years, in the Matanuska Susitna Valley. Knowing how beautiful Alaska is made it harder for me to think of Martyr, buried underground and unable to see the sky.

This book delves into what it means to be human by looking at a new kind of slave—clones.

Strengths? Martyr was adorable. His personality was adorable, his voice was adorable, and his need for love was adorable. (I do love the orphan boys.) The look at cloning from a Christian perspective was great. The use of a clone allowed Williamson to preach the gospel without coming across as too preachy. I mean, the clone had never heard about sin or about Jesus, so it was no stretch to have the Christians spell the gospel out for him.

Weaknesses? I think the book felt a tad preachy simply because some of the adults were not as smart as they should have been—they were not three-dimensional characters. As lovely as the main characters were, the secondary characters were a little thin. I also thought the ending was rushed.

The strengths far outweigh the weaknesses and I’m glad I read this one. I am watching for Williamson’s next offering.

I’ve been sitting outside, enjoying the lovely spring weather, listening to the birds singing, and reading.

It’s good for the soul to get away from the computer every now and again.

But here I am, back again, with a burning need to rant write. I’m currently reading a book that is so frustrating.

It’s a wonderful story with a heroine I love. She’s on a great adventure. And this is exactly the kind of story I love. Strong heroine, coping with unfair circumstances, all alone, on an adventure trying to survive. There is romance coming, I’m pretty sure. There is so much I love about this book.

And yet, I’m struggling to get through it. I keep falling asleep. Now, granted, I’ve been sick and I’m falling asleep on everything I read. But I find it telling that I’ll be reading along, into the book, loving it, and  then…I hit a patch of description. And my eyes glaze over.

There are several small, irritating things that should have been edited out. But those I can ignore. What gets me are the patches of description that I’m pretty sure were edited in. I suspect these sections were added in after the book was written, because they don’t fit the flow of the story. I’m reading along and the sentences are varied and interesting and the story is flowing, and then the character will enter a room and all action will stop while the narrator tells us what the room looks like. The narrator sees every room in about five sentences all with the same structure. So these patches of description look like this:

The floor was covered with a thick purple rug. There were three windows in the left wall. The back wall had a fireplace. A table was in the middle of the room. Chairs were around the table.

OK so what am I whining about? Five short sentences. This method of description is quick and effective, I suppose. I know what the room looks like. But when you have these short descriptions dropped in every time you enter a new room and every time a new character comes on the scene, it gets old pretty fast. It’s one thing to stop on the top of a mountain and take time to drink in the view. It’s quite another thing to stop in the middle of the story action, to remark on all the furniture in every. Single. Room. You. Enter.

We do need the author to paint the scene, but we don’t need authors to stop the action while they describe people and rooms. It takes longer to describe a room in the midst of the action, and it feels counter-intuitive. It feels like the added words will slow the book down. But just the opposite is true, I think.

Brian opened the door and surveyed the room. The first thing he noticed was the thick, dark purple rug. Why was he not surprised? It matched Lucretia’s brooding personality. On the far side of the room a fire burned in the grate, the flames greedily licking the bottom of a cast iron pot. On the table in the middle of the room, Brian found a hot pad, and he used it to pick up the pot. No telling what evil brew the old woman was cooking up. Maybe it was harmless, but why take chances? He crossed to the windows in the west wall and drew back the curtains, letting the morning sun flood in. Then he cranked open one sash and dumped the contents of the pot onto the bushes below.

OK. Much longer. But you are discovering what the room looks like without bringing the story to a screeching halt. And you are getting some clues about Brian, and about the person who lives in the room besides. You’re getting a lot more than simple, straight description.

What do you think? I realize that taste comes into play here. Obviously the person who edited the book I’m reading, likes to have rooms and people described right away. What about you? Do you like the longer version or the shorter? Or is there a third option?