Five things . . .

So for lack of a better idea, I'll do what Kij Johnson calls a Princess Moonbeam entry:

five phrases you use:
* You can make different decisions than I do
* Watch me not care
* Oddsfish!
* I'm going to write a cookbook someday called Cooking for Ingrates
* Close the damn door!

Five things that amuse you:
* cassieclaire's Very Secret Diaries
* A different take on Hamlet
* A page to go to if you've been cruising too long on the Internet
* Georgette Heyer
* Jane Austen

five snacks you enjoy:
* Starbucks espresso brownies
* microwave chocolate cake
* a banana with chocolate chips, microwaved for two minutes, then slathered with Bailey's Irish cream
* popcorn with parmesan cheese
* butterscotch microwave pudding

five albums that changed your life:
* Sting Dream of the Blue Turtles
* Loreena McKennitt The Mask and the Mirror
* John Williams Star Wars
* The soundtrack to Cyrano de Bergerac
* Indigo Girls Swamp Ophelia

five things above your desk:
* A button that Joel Rosenberg gave me that says "So I haven't been writing lately. Neither has Shakespeare."
* A braid of my hair, about six inches long
* Sam and Frodo action figures (on top of my computer monitor, actually. They keep orcs away from my office)
* A complete set of Shakespeare from 1844 that belonged to my grandmother
* A picture of Kij Johnson, wearing a plastic dog nose

five things you can't live without:
* books
* computer
* chocolate
* coffee
* a microwave

five good things to touch:
* my daughters' tummies
* Rob's beard
* silk
* beads
* velvet

five things you'd buy if you had a grand:
* Eileen Fisher designer wear. I always loved how it looks in the store, and I've never bought a single piece because it's so damn expensive.
* a gift certificate to a good bookstore (one with a coffee shop attached)
* The original painting for my second novel (if he'd sell it for that low a price, which I doubt!)
* a professional massage every month for a year
* more of Elise Matthesen's necklaces

When to call in the experts

Spent an hour on the Internet looking for web sites on Hotshot wildfire crews, and getting more and more confused and frustrated. I can't decide whether to abandon this story or not.

The problem is, I'm sinking into the research like La Brea tar pit, and there doesn't seem to be any end to it. I can't write it because I don't know enough, and I can't get enough of a handle on the research. I'm trying to write a story about a totally foreign culture. I haven't felt this bad since I was trying to figure out how to write about Manhattan gay bath houses in the early 1980s for The Wild Swans.

I know someone I could ask: my sister's sister-in-law has been doing wildfire fighting for years. I've met her like once, and I'm sure that I could call her up and say, I've got this story I'm working on; could you vett it for me? Or at least help me kick the idea around so I can figure out how to get it off the ground?

I've never had anyone refuse when I've approached them as a potential expert. In my experience, people are flattered to be asked to lend their expertise. But there are some people I don't have the nerve to ask, and they're generally people who are in fields with a lot of involved technical information. Like I had that story "The Silver Answer," about the woman cop psychically linked with her K-9 partner, and I worked on it as hard as I could for months. A woman I work with is married to a K-9 officer, and I never could work up the nerve to ask him to vett it. I don't know why. Maybe cops are too intimidating. Maybe I was afraid it would sound too much like a bad cop show and he'd laugh at me. Ridiculous. And so I never sold the story (although I marketed it to a lot of places), and I keep taking it out and picking at it every two years or so.

So: do I try contacting Barb or not? The problem is, I don't feel I know enough information to know what to ask her. And so I read book after book after book, trying to absorb an enormous amount of material that people spend their whole careers learning. And trying to hypothesize out the future developments of technology. I'm ready to tear my hair out in despair.

I can't quite bring myself to abandon it, and I can't quite bring myself to contact Barb, and I can't quite bring myself to write it.

Aaargh.

Sometimes I feel like such a greenhorn ninny. Disgusted with myself tonight.



Snarling,
Peg