Thrilled to announce that State v. Claus is now live! You can buy State v. Claus wherever you like: directly from Tuxedo Cat Press (paperback only), from your neighborhood bookstore (paperback or ebook), from your favorite online bookstore (in whichever formats they offer). Read State v. Claus however you like–just head over to Tuxedo Cat […]
It’s Christmas Eve. All the ordering (and returning and re-ordering) is finished. All the errands—purchasing gifts and cards and wrapping paper and gift bags, all the packing and mailing of gift boxes, all the shopping for holiday meals and parties and events—it’s all done. At least, it’s as done as it’s going to be, because all the stores have closed for Christmas.
Which means that it’s time for a respite. That respite is Jolabokaflod.
Originating in Iceland, Jolabokaflod translates approximately as “Christmas book flood” or “Yule book flood.” It’s a cozy holiday tradition celebrated on Christmas Eve. For Jolabokaflod, everyone exchanges books as gifts. Then, they spend the evening snuggled up with their new books and hot chocolate or other festive drinks, savoring the peace of the evening and the company of loved ones as they immerse themselves in stories.
It wouldn’t quite be fair to say I wasn’t considering adopting another cat, but I definitely wasn’t considering adopting two.
Turns out, life had other plans.
Ever since Ned’s passing two years ago, I’ve lived with four cats. Some people think this is a lot of cats, but it didn’t seem like a particularly large clowder to me. A few months ago, I considered adopting a diabetic ten-year-old tuxedo cat named Julio. The problem was that Julio is on a very strict diet to manage his diabetes. Since all my cats are grazers, there would be no way to keep him on his diet. So although he’s a lovely boy, I concluded that I wouldn’t be able to take him in.
The next possibility was a five-year-old blind cat named Owen. He’d been dumped in an apartment building parking lot. He was sleek, pewter-gray, and incredibly sweet. I was supposed to be writing his bio, but instead, I decided to adopt him. The next day, as I was completing an adoption application, I received an email advising me that Owen had died earlier that day. Apparently, he’d had an undiagnosed tumor on his spleen, and it burst that morning.
God knows, I wasn’t paying attention. The day before—a Monday in September, bright and sunny—I was in a judge’s chambers in Hartford with an Assistant Attorney General. The lawyer I was working with was on the west coast, and so I’d shown up, and we were discussing the AAG’s claim that the action I’d created—something about a license for someone working in elevators—should be dismissed—for lack of jurisdiction, I think. The judge, whose name I don’t recall, told the AAG—I think his name was Aaron—that he would have to file a written motion to dismiss by Wednesday. The judge—maybe a woman, but I couldn’t say for certain now—told me that I had to get a handful of documents served by then. Sure, fine. Whatever.
The next morning—another bright, sunny September day—I was getting ready to leave when my local public radio station (Remember public radio? Back before the felon cut all the funding?) said something about an airplane having collided with one of the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan. I remembered the Twin Towers, because in 1987, I’d delivered documents there. Don’t recall what documents, to whom, or why, just that I had to drive down from Stamford and whisk up to a triple-digit floor—101? 102? 106? I don’t remember now, because I was more concerned about getting home to continue unpacking, because in the spring of 1987, I was moving to downtown Stamford and an errand to the Twin Towers was unremarkable at best.
But on that September morning—I don’t remember what I thought when I heard about the plane hitting that first tower, except that at the time, I didn’t think much. I went to the lawyer’s office and made copies of the documents that needed to be served. At one point, his bookkeeper said that the radio announcer had said a plane hit the Pentagon, but the bookkeeper thought that was a hoax—no idea why, but that was his opinion.
Tuxedo Cat Press at NoRA Cupcake Company, Middletown, CT
I can picture you squinting, maybe scratching your head: What season?
THE Season.
Football?
Good God, no.
Pumpkin spice?
Nope.
Back to school?
No (and besides, you’re late).
Country fair season?
No, but you’re getting closer.
You mean . . . ?
Yes! It’s Book Event Season!
Um . . . is that even a thing?
It is at my house, baby.
Allow me to explain.
At present, I am looking forward to ten confirmed event days (one fair is two days) where I will be signing and selling books, and more are possible. (See my Upcoming Events pages for details – I have one on my author website and one on Tuxedo Cat Press’s site.) Not bad, considering that (a) there are only fifteen (15) weekends between now and Christmas, (b) I have a full-time day job and various other commitments, and (c) I’d really like to get back to work on my third Claus book.
Even so, I’m looking forward to the Season, and I’d love to have you join me. At outdoor events, I’ll have a tent; at indoor events, a table. Either way, you’ll see the banner for State v. Claus and the sign for Tuxedo Cat Press. As we get closer to the holidays—probably in late October or early November—I’ll be offering free gift-wrapping as well as personalized inscriptions so that you can wrap up your holiday shopping (pun intended) in one stop.
Last Friday, I went outside to clean the moss off my basement steps. There are four steps leading from the yard down to the square of cement in front of my basement door. I can’t recall the last time I cleaned them off. Quite possibly never, if I’m honest. Since I’ve lived here for 26 years, that’s a whole lot of not-cleaning, but they’re just a few steps in my backyard. I’m not even certain whether they’re stone or cement, although they’re perfectly squared off, leading me to suspect they were poured.
A few weeks ago, as I was walking down the steps, I slipped. Just a little, and I didn’t fall. The thought flashed through my brain that I should clean off the moss that covered the steps, but then I moved onto the next thing and forgot all about them. Then, last week, I slipped again. Again, it was just a little bit of slippage, and I didn’t fall, but it occurred to me that if I actually did fall and sustained injury, I’d be on my own. Only a person standing in a certain part of my backyard would ever see me. My neighbors might hear me if I could manage to be loud enough, but if I were to hit my head and be knocked out—more likely that I’d be a late-night snack for one of the bears that is frequenting our neighborhood.
I nearly had a break today. I came thisclose to taking off the most beautiful day in ages, the kind the weather people call a “top ten weather day.” The heat wave broke, the sky was vivid blue with feathery white clouds, the temperatures were mild, and I had no deadlines looming.
Or so I thought.
Turns out, I’d forgotten about one. I only remembered because the client called around noon to ask about the project. And just like that, my day off was shot to hell.
I’ve lost track of the count. While I’ve been making notes and thinking over the past two days, the only writing I’ve done (other than legal work) has been a couple scribbled notes. (I nearly wrote “a few,” but the truth is there are only two, one yesterday and one today. If I’m going to confess, I may as well be honest.)
At first, if I missed a day, I circled it on the calendar. Then, I found I was forgetting to cross off days, and I had to try to remember whether it was because I’d written and not noted it or if I’d simply not written. Either way, it wasn’t terrific. At this point, I could make a decent guess about how many days I’ve missed—ten, maybe. Not brilliant, but at least I’ve plodded along.
The upside is that by pushing myself in the past two months, I’ve made very good progress on the section of the book that really, really needed work—as in, it wasn’t there. All I had was a note that I had to add a climax and a conclusion. Those are pretty big things to need to add.
My problem was that I hadn’t figured out what they were going to be, apart from a vague notion about something at the very end. I’d also forgotten the most important thing about my process, which is that I write to discover the story. When I started following the characters instead of dictating to them, the final ascent to the climax began to unfold. (Yes, I’m mixing the hell out of my metaphors. Enjoy.)
Come on, admit it. You figured I threw in the towel, especially since my last blog post had nothing to do with this project.
Well, maybe. I mean, it’s been a while.
I’ll admit, I’ve missed two days (which is why this was Day 52, not Day 54). And some of my writing days have been fairly minimal—half an hour (or less), or just research, or mainly reading and editing. It’s certainly been no #1000wordsofsummer this year.
But that’s actually a good thing.
Sure, right.
No, really, I’m not making excuses. For where this book is now, a daily word goal would have been counterproductive. Word goals are good when you’re putting down the first draft and figuring out the story. That’s not where I am now. At this point, I’m fleshing out a piece of the story that I’d found wildly intimidating. By going slowly and including research, I’m making real progress, not just slap down some words and call it done progress. I’m cutting phrases and lines and paragraphs and whatever else needs to go. I’m editing what was already there to accommodate the new material. I’m seeing how the new stuff is going to impact what came before, such as where I need to drop in references so that what happens in the climactic section isn’t coming out of the blue. (I hate it when I get broadsided by critical information just at the pivotal moment. It’s like reading a murder mystery and being told on page 332 of a 335-page book that the main suspect had a twin brother nobody knew about, and the two planned the murder together, with one of them accepting an award at a black-tie event—perfect alibi—while the other committed the murder.)
The reality is that barring a flat-out miracle—including three months when I don’t have to practice law and yet money magically appears in the bank every month, as well as a brilliant (and affordable) editor who is free to drop everything and spend four weeks helping me turn this mess into a masterpiece—there is simply no way this book will be out for the holidays this year. I hate that so much. At book events last year, I kept telling people that the new book would be out this year. Now, I’m making myself a liar. The only option would be to write and publish a novella-length piece in this series, except that there isn’t time to do that because I’d have to start from scratch and it’s already the middle of June and I have no ideas for something short and self-contained. I can’t even use the first section of the present book, because there’s nothing particularly Christmasy about it, and if I’m going to publish a novella about Santa Claus at the holidays, it needs to be Christmasy. Plus, because I’m me and I require everything to fit together, it would somehow need to advance the series.
Sigh.
You’re probably wishing right now that this was another post about ecclesiastical garments. Mea maxima culpa.
Except . . . you know. . . .
No. Absolutely not. It wouldn’t work.
Well, maybe. . . .
Forget it. I’m sticking with the manuscript in progress.
But what if. . . ?
This is ridiculous. I can’t get distracted. Not now. I cannot go from start to finish on another book–especially not in time for the holidays. It is not possible. It doesn’t matter that there’s this one large, gaping hole in the narrative, and there isn’t room in this book to deal with that issue because it would make the book much longer and it doesn’t fit anywhere with any of the rest of the story anyway, so it would have to be separate anyway except that it wouldn’t be long enough to be a novel by itself, so. . . .
I’m just saying. . . .
Oh, shut up.
Photo credit: fr0ggy5 on Unsplash
Well. I certainly didn’t see this coming when I started this post. And I don’t know whether it’ll be possible anyway.
But it would address that gaping hole, which is nice because the book I’m currently working on is the final book of the series, so this would take care of that issue before I get to the finale. Not that anybody has ever mentioned the hole. Maybe I’m the only one who sees it. Maybe it’s not really a hole at all.
I hate moving away from the book in progress now, just when I’m finally getting a firm handle on it. After all, do I really have to have a new book this year? Of course not. Nobody’s going to cry if I tell them it’s not happening this year. Most of the people from last year’s events probably won’t remember anyway. It’s not as if they’re sitting around saying, “Oh, I can’t wait for [fill in the event], because P. Jo Anne Burgh said she’s going to have a new book this year!”
Yesterday, I was distracted during the proclamation of the gospel. At risk of being sacrilegious, I confess that instead of listening to the words that were read, I contemplated textiles and seamstresses.
Allow me to explain.
The way things are arranged at my church is likely the same as at many Episcopal churches. We generally have two priests at a service. One of them preaches, and the other is the celebrant, meaning that their main job is to celebrate communion. Other participants include the organist/choir director, the choir, the acolytes, and the lay reader. It’s a nice division of labor.
Danny is very excited that there’s finally a printed draft.
It’s been two weeks since I posted an update.
(You thought I quit, didn’t you?)
I wasn’t going to quit, but I did come perilously close to a . . . hiatus . . . over the past several days. It’s the kind of thing that can happen when the Day Job takes over your days (and nights) for weeks on end, including weekends. I know work will slow as we move into summer because after 28 years, I recognize that this is how things roll, so I know to be grateful for the current hectic pace. Still, I’m exhausted, and there comes a point where too many things demand your attention, and you say, “Fine, whatever. I’ll get back to the book when I get a chance.”
P. Jo Anne Burgh 