Sixth-Year Potions Class at Work

Today I did one of my favorite things at work.  I got to do potions class.  Here’s how I took ordinary tap water, made Felix Filicis, the Draught of Living Death, and then back to water.

(Note: the real ingredients and end product are actually very dangerous and should not be touched with your bare hands or drunk)

So first I started with plain old water, which must be rushing from the tap when you fill the bottle.

I added some powdered moonstone (Manganous sulfate) and crushed scarab (alkaline iodide-azide reagent). This turns the water into an orange floc which settles eventually.

To finish the Felix Felicis spell, you must add the dust of a fallen star (sulfamic acid powder) to the floc.

Ta-dah! Felix!

But the magic isn’t over.  Next up was to make the Daught of Living Death, a potion you certainly don’t want to mess with.

First I transferred my Felix Felicis to a new flask.  Then, of course, I need to add some valerian roots and the juice of the sopophorous bean (starch indicator).  By now your Draught should be pretty dark.

This is all pretty cool, but my favorite part comes next.  Now’s when we take this deadly Draught and turn it back into water.

To do that, you need the liquid from a phoenix egg (sodium thiosulfate in liquid form).  You drip this slowly into the flask until it turns blue…

…and lighter blue…

…and then, finally, until it turns clear as water once more.

Hooray, you have done magic!

And in real life, this will tell you the dissolve oxygen in your water.  The magic trick as a whole is called the Winkler titration.

Hope you enjoyed today’s potions class.  Tomorrow, perhaps, I will teach you how to find the antidote to an unknown poison  (We call this a Toxicity Identification Evaluation in the lab).

Lots of love,

Sage

Workout Wednesday – New *Mile*stones

It’s been a long time, Workout Wednesday, but I haven’t forgotten you.

Today I hit a new milestone, and I thought, “wish it was Wednesday so I had an excuse to write about it” before realizing itis Wednesday, lol.

A little background, my workout schedule looks a lot different from what it looked like when I used to post these.  My PT is different, we meet on a different day, and I’m more likely to skip a class to do something on my own.  I’m also less likely to do a double workout, although I did one today.

So here’s this week’s workout.

Thursday: Aqua fitness class

Friday: Circuit: spinning at different speeds for certain intervals; arm weight exercises–bicep curls, high row, and shoulder press; ab work–leg raises and knee tucks

Saturday: Off

Sunday: Same as Friday

Monday: 50 minutes of Zumba Fitness on my PS3

Tuesday: 2 miles jogging

Wednesday:

• Circuit: One minute each x3 sets: Jump squats, “driving the bus” (arm exercise with 10-lb plate), sumo high row (squat then stand into a high row with 10-lb plate)
• 4(!) miles jogging

—

About the jogging.  A few weeks ago, I didn’t know that I could actually jog more than a mile.  The pool was closed one Thursday, but I had my gym clothes with me and had already taken my inhaler, so I decided to use the track.  I wasn’t planning on working out long, since I didn’t have my iPhone for music or a book (which I could have read on the treadmill).  After walking a few laps, I decided to jog a few more, then leave.

I did 3 laps, which is a quarter of a mile, and thought, “Huh, why don’t I try for a mile, and just see how far I get?”  So I did.  Without music, I didn’t have a beat, and my pace was set by how fast I felt like going, not by how fast my music is going (which usually leads to me wheezing too much to go at a slower pace later).  I finished the mile.

And then I did another.

Since then, I’ve started using the track more and more on cardio days.  Since I’ve done the 2 miles, I refuse to quit before I reach that far.  Instead of music, I listen to an audiobook to keep me entertained.  And today I bought a counter for my iPhone so that I don’t have to keep track of the 12 laps/mile on my fingers, which causes them to cramp and causes me to stop at 2 miles even if I thought I could go further.  Obviously, this was a great plan, as I doubled my mile count today.

I’m going to see if I can build up my endurance and convince myself to sacrifice more time out of the day (I do about 10-11-minute miles) and see if I can work up to a 5K/10K/half-marathon level (not expecting myself to be able to do 26 miles, like, ever, but 13 maybe?).  It gives me a new excuse to return to WWs too, if I have new progress to chart.

Anyway, that’s my progress this week.  Any good workouts you’ve done lately?

Lots of love,
Sage

An Open Letter to My Cats

Dear Jezzie, Jasper, Jack, and Harvest (yes, I know two of you aren’t mine, but you’re just as guilty),

The following things do not inspire me to get out of bed and feed you, even if they wake me up (which usually they don’t because you start when my alarm goes off).

• Crying over and over about how neglected you are
• Finding a plastic bag in my room and pawing at it
• Shutting my door
• Pawing at the now-closed door so that it bangs against the doorway
• Snarling at each other
• Fighting with each other, especially on my bed
• Running across my pillow
• Going under my bed, lying on your back, and scratching at the underside of my boxsprings
• Scratching at the carpet
• Licking my hand
• Licking any piece of material you find in my room (wallscrolls, bedskirt, gym bag, etc.)
• Digging at my back

Here are a few things you have done in the past that have inspired me to get up immediately and feed you

• Giving one sharp meow to remind me to wake up because I am actually late (thanks, Jasper)
• Purring in my ear
• Rubbing your cheek against my hand (without opening your mouth)

Let me ask you something seriously.  Have I ever failed to feed you?  Have I ever left it later than eight in the morning, even on sleep-in days?  Even on days where I closed my door and jammed a towel in the crack so you couldn’t bang on it?  No.  I never forget you.  Can you trust me a little?  That last five minutes in between hitting my snooze alarm and the alarm going off again are my favorite part of sleeping, but not when you guys are being demanding.  When I write until midnight, and the alarm goes off at 5 a.m., I don’t have patience to listen to you rattling plastic bags during my sleeping time.  If you haven’t noticed, I don’t get up when you do this.  I hit my snooze alarm again and again until you settle down.  I refuse to encourage this behavior.

So please.  Go take a five-minute cat nap, and I’ll do the same, and I promise I’ll be up to feed you before you have time to starve.

Lots of love,

Sage

One Year Ago

So this is the story of my first offer.  Today is the one-year anniversary, so I thought it was a good time to share.

It starts off with a trip to Martha’s Vineyard.  Mid-winter I was going stir-crazy, and I was stuck on the computer all day long at work, and I decided I needed a break.  We were also planning to look at houses and get a loan for one in the summer, so I knew that if I was going to go on a writing vacation (as I had the year before), it should be before we started that process.

The house in Martha’s Vineyard was awesome.  It was right on the water and had lots of great windows.  It was the perfect atmosphere for writing.  Also, it had a ghost.  There was a computer in a corner under the stairs, and myself and a writing friend who was there the first weekend heard someone typing on the computer when nobody was there.

I have recently posted about the query addiction that started during this vacation.  It was only supposed to be one query for every 1000 words, but once I started getting requests, I started querying more and more.

One request was for a snail mailed full.  I freaked out a little because I had no way of printing out the novel (which was Love Sucks), but a friend of mine offered to print it out at work and send it off for me.

I sent the query on Monday, and the request was also on Monday.  I believe the full was put in the mail on Wednesday.  I actually had more full requests before the vacation ended.

On Saturday of that week, I had the fun task of driving home.  I had to go to work on Monday, and I was undecided whether to make the full 15-hour drive from Martha’s Vineyard to Ohio that day or to stop at my aunt’s on the way back.  On the way to Martha’s Vineyard, I had stopped at a hotel halfway there, but I wanted a recovery day before going back to work.

But when I got to the ferry, I was in for some bad news.  There was almost no way I was getting on the next ferry, and it wasn’t looking so good for the one afterwards either.  I was looking at possibly not even getting off the island until 1 p.m.  I bought a standby ticket and put my car in line, then went and got myself some breakfast.  I was back in the car with plenty of time to go, but once they started loading cars, it seemed like the lines that had formed after me were going before me, even though it had looked like they had already let in the cars who weren’t in standby.  I was getting anxious.  But finally my line moved, and while I didn’t get on that ferry, I did get in the spaces where they had the next cars for standby ready.  So all I needed were five spaces to be open on the next ferry and I could get in.

First I had to wait for it.  I wondered if I should call my aunt and uncle and ask to stay the night.  I actually dialed them, then after a ring, realized it was still Saturday morning, and maybe they were still asleep, so I hung up.  Then I got out of my car, took some pictures, wandered around a little, and ran back to my car when the ferry showed up.

And that was about the same time my phone rang.

My first assumption was that it was my aunt calling me.  I didn’t recognize the area code as being the same as the number I had called a little bit before, but it was the only thing that made sense.  I answered.

The voice was strange, but he introduced himself immediately.  It was the agent who had requested the snail mail full.  The whole time I was thinking, “No way.  Seriously?”  But I am a big multi-tasker, so I was also thinking about what he was saying, reminding myself that in ten minutes when I was off the phone, this really did happen, and more than anything, worrying about the ferry and whether I’d get on and whether they’d let me on with a phone at my ear when there was a sign that said “No cell phones” and whether I could safely drive on to a ferry while talking on the phone.

And very sadly, all this ferry stress kinda stole my big “OMG, an offer” moment. 

So Agent offered me representation, gushed over how high concept Love Sucks was, told me it needed revisions, but when I asked for details (Hey, I had a long drive to think about them), only gave me one.  He then told me that he knew I had to contact my other agents, but if I could give him an answer by Friday, that’d be great.  We hung up.  I got on the ferry.  I texted everyone I knew 😉

Once I was off the ferry, I drove very quickly, watching every sign as soon as I was on a major freeway looking for a Panera.  Usually I would try to have lunch as late as possible to break up the drive, but I didn’t want to waste a second.  I found one pretty quickly and got lunch and used the WiFi to e-mail the other agents with fulls, half of which had requested in the last week.  Of course, it was Saturday, so I figured that some of them might not be checking their e-mail until Monday, but still, it felt good to get it done. 

I sped home and by the time I got there at about 11:30 p.m. (I managed to knock two hours off the drive by ignoring the speed limit), a few of the agents had already passed.  One asked the next day to have time to read the novel, but she was on vacation at the time, so she said she’d talk to me on Wednesday when she got back.  She ended up requesting revisions, all of which made sense, but in the end, I couldn’t say no to the guaranteed offer.

Of course, as you know, I am not currently agented, but… that is a different story to be told on a different anniversary.

So interestingly, at the time, I had always expected those Martha’s Vineyard fulls to last a long time.  That had been my experience so far.  I had a 6-month full, a 5-month full, and a 3-month full, and never had had a rejection from any of them.  My experience was that I would send out fulls that would never get answers, not even if I status queried them.  So the call was a complete surprise.

It’s a stark contrast from these days, where I’m anticipating The Call (or E-mail) at every moment.  If the phone rings and it’s not a specific ring tone, I freak out that it might be an agent.  I track agents on Query Tracker and Twitter to try to guess their response times and if they’re reading my mss.  Not having The Call before, I dreamed it would happen, but didn’t really expect it.  Knowing it can come, and how soon after a request, has made me more impatient, as I’m sure you’ve all figured out.

But that’s okay.  I’m still waiting.  Because even though it’s been a year since that offer, it hasn’t been a full year of wall-to-wall querying.  There were revisions and new novels and even newer novels.  And even though one agent has had Love Sucks for 9 months now (LS does seem to be the mss that sits on agents’ desks forever…, with one exception, of course), one agent has had Fireflies for less than two hours, lol. 

So that’s my offer story.  If an agent were to offer this March 28, it would prove to be less stressful and way more exciting.  All I have planned today is lab work, and I’d love a break in that, to be honest 😉 Hint, hint.

Lots of love,

Sage

P.S. (I forgot) Currently on iPod: The Bonny Swans by Loreena McKennitt

Teaser Tuesday – 3/16/10

So 3-15 was pretty boring.  Maybe next year will be the foreshadowed date?  Even though it was boring, I’ll tell you why I thought it might be exciting.  A couple of years ago on 3-15, the Pick Three lottery numbers were 3-1-5, and they made a huge deal about it because it was the date and a lot of people had picked it.  Well, ever since then 315 has been EVERYWHERE, so I assume it’s haunting me for a reason.  Some kind of sign.

But not this week.

Here’s my teaser from Taylor-Made.  It occurs shortly after the last scene I teased with and is from Rosie’s POV.

She stalked over to a different machine, ordering a water and a sandwich.  Turkey, provolone, light mayo, lettuce, she entered the options with a practiced finger.  Finally, carrot sticks as a side.  The vending machine spit out her order, then Kara’s.

“Don’t you get bored buying the same sandwich every day?” Kara asked.  She was picking at a slice of pizza.

“Makes more sense than getting pizza with mushrooms on it when you don’t like them.”

Kara took another mushroom off, finally clearing enough off to nibble on the end.  “I like the flavor, just not the texture.  Give me a break.”

“I’m just saying, lunch would be easier if you didn’t have to–”

The whine of a siren interrupted her.  Rosie’s heart doubled in speed.  Shit, was this a drill?  She didn’t really have time to think about it before she was grabbing Kara’s arm and pulling her towards their homeroom’s line, their lunches forgotten.  They lined up in the quad, waited for their teachers to count them, then marched, room by room, down into the shelter under the school.

Rosie’s homeroom was one of the last down there.  She watched the overcast sky, listening for the sound of planes or targeting missiles.  Nuevo Angeles was supposed to be safe–anyone attacking the capital would be obliterated in response–but logic was having a tough time battling the fear instilled by the sirens.

Still, by the time Rosie’s class was in the shelter, she was feeling a little more certain that this was just a drill.  No sign of weapons or aircraft.

She had to admit, it was highly unlikely her class would get in the shelter in time if there was an actual attack.  This didn’t keep her from hugging herself and staring at the door, listening with the rest of her class for the sounds of explosions outside. 

So there it is.  My first Rosie tease.

Currently on my iPod: All I Hear by Train

Yep, that’s right, I got through all the rest of the Ws, the Xs, Ys, Zs, numbers, and am in the As.  I seem to remember that there are a lot of “All”s, so I might be there for a while 😉

Lots of love,
Sage

Where Did My Exclamation Points Go?

For everyone worried about me, my toe is fine, as far as I know.  I’m more worried about the cut than the fracture.  It doesn’t really hurt unless I do something stupid like jam it on the stairs or against the shower wall.  You know, be me. 😉

In other news, I wrote last night, yay.  I entered the NPR three-minute fiction contest.  Chances of winning are incredibly small, but it was good to break past some writer’s block.  Of course, five minutes after I sent it, I had a better story idea, lol.

Okay, but here’s the point of this post.  Maybe you’ve noticed that I’ve been avoiding exclamation points, even when posting exciting things.  It’s possible I’ve missed one in an excerpt here or there, but I have been looking for them before posting.  I’ve been avoiding exclamation points since mid-November.

Why would I do this?

Well, it starts with Twitter and my querying Trouble.  An awesome agent, Holly Root, tweeted that she had given up exclamation points and that things had gotten exciting since she had.  So I decided to give up exclamation points until such time that I deemed I had good enough news to use them.  Obviously, I was hoping that good news would be agent-related.  Which still has yet to happen.

But where did they go?  All those months of exclamationless writing.  Where did the exclamation points go?

I’m pretty sure they went into Suzanne Young’s book, The Naughty List.  Possibly all in the first chapter, lol.  For every fake swear word the MC gives us, she punctuates it with a exclamation.  And she’s a cheerleader and has some dramatic friends so, as you can imagine, things get yelled, shouted, cheered, screamed, and, well, exclaimed all the time in there.

But for me?  No exclamation points yet.  You’ll know when it’s time.

Lots of love,

Sage

Valentine’s Day 2010

I love Valentine’s Day.  Usually.

This year it sucked (love sucks?).  Even the Olympics were boring.  Even chocolate tasted bad (and I’m not supposed to have it, and yet I did anyway).  I had made a deal with the Universe that I would get an agent on Valentine’s Day (what better day to get some agent love), and instead got rejected all over.  My dinner made me sick.  (Though not as sick as my cat was this morning… <sighs> Today’s not looking much better.)

Seriously, I’m not looking for romance and flowers for Valentine’s Day.  But could I be shown a little love next year?

Lots of love,

Sage

The Origin of Fireflies

I’m going to post the Fiona part of Dance Me a Match this week, so I thought I’d talk about how Fireflies came about.  It starts with another novel.  For National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo), I was writing the story of a reality show that crossed a dance competition with a matchmaking show.  For those of you who don’t know, in NaNo, you are challenged to write 50K words in the 30 days of November.  Because of the 50K rule, I decided to go with a cool structure for the novel.  I would split it into 25 parts – 8 sections or weeks of the show with 3 chapters each, plus a separate chapter for the finale.  Each chapter would be 2000 words, thus making it 50K, and I’d write at least one chapter a day (so I’d be done on day 25, in theory).  Each section would have a chapter from my main character’s POV (the teen cameraman with a crush on the host), and two chapters from the contestants’ POVs.  A different girl would be in each chapter, so that in the end I had 16 contestant POVs plus the cameraman’s.

When I started, I had no idea how I was going to come up with these 16 POVs, so I started taking songs that I liked or found a story within and applying them to Dance Me a Match.  I got two-thirds of the way through the novel when I realized I was one girl short.  Fortunately, sagelikethesister had just introduced me to the Owl City song, “Fireflies,” which I had fallen in love with.  I created this whimsical insomniac based off the song and started integrating her into the story.  When it came to her chapter, I experimented with voice.  Usually I get stuck in an attitude-filled voice, but for Fiona, I had this hazy stream-of-consciousness narrative.  I adored it.

One of the things I loved most was how Fiona’s view of the world was so dreamy and she didn’t always know what was going on, but we knew because of information we had from other POVs.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do that as much in Fireflies because Fiona’s POV is the only one the novel has, but there are a few instances of it.

When I finished DMaM, I knew it wasn’t really something I wanted to go forward with.  I’m not really an edgy type of girl, and DMaM is another proof of that.  I also didn’t ever connect to it, except for a few POVs… like Fiona’s.  When the novel was done, the only chapter I wanted to read was Fiona’s.  So I took that chapter and created a full novel around this one girl.   Anybody who’s beta read Fireflies or read some excerpts will probably see some similarities in the DMaM chapter.  First of all, it just didn’t seem right to leave out Fiona’s search for a ghost.  So I put that in Fireflies.  Also, her musings about her brother and his TBI is a huge part of Fireflies (although not that long in the DMaM chapter).  Finally, some of my favorite lines in the second are echoes of the first. 

Anyway, I still have a fondness for her part in DMaM, which is why I’ll share it with you this week. 

Lots of love,

Sage

Red Light, Green Light? No, Yellow

On my way to work, every light was yellow.

I think that sums up my life right now.

When I was first learning to drive, I was absolutely freaked out by yellow lights.  I still had my permit and was nearing my sixteenth birthday, when I came up to a yellow light and couldn’t figure out whether to go or stop.  I alternated between the brake and the accelerator.  Stop?  Go?  Yes? No?  I finally went through.

“You just ran a red light,” my dad said.  I felt like I had committed this cardinal sin.

And suddenly yellow lights were everywhere.  Every other light I came to seemed to be yellow. Do they time them for the speed of uber-careful new drivers?  “And if they’re going exactly the speed limit, they’ll hit the danger zone right… now.  Yellow light.”  It basically made me scared to drive for about a year.

I still hate yellow lights.  Every time the light is yellow as you approach that intersection, you have to wonder: do you have time to speed through that intersection before it turns red?  Victory if so, you’re on your way 😀  If not, you’re stuck, going nowhere 😦

Some authors have green lights.  Their careers are obviously going somewhere.  They have agents or editors, maybe even a book on the shelves.  They’re heading forward, and they have good reason to believe they can keep going forward (because at the very least, someone in the publishing world believes in them).

Some authors have red lights.  All they’re getting are rejections, whether it’s because their queries suck, they don’t have good ideas, or their first few pages show they don’t know how to write.  Most of the writers I know have a decent understanding of the English language, but I’m always appalled to hear that a good percentage of an agent’s slushpile is full of people who can’t string a simple sentence together.

But what if you were endlessly approaching that intersection with the yellow light?  Unsure if you’re getting through or going to have to stop.  Filled with the exhilartion of the possibility of racing through and the dread that maybe you should stop.

Every light was yellow on my way to work this morning. 

I have had a great response to my Fireflies queries, and every day I look at my e-mail hoping to be shown that I have a green light, but every day all I get is yellow.  This wouldn’t be so discouraging–I mean, it’s better than all red lights; I at least have hope–but Fireflies is the third novel I have requests out there for.  The first one, Love Sucks, has fulls that I’ve been waiting on for 4-7 months.  That’s a long time to be anticipating that intersection.  And to think that I might have another, say, seven months before hearing back on these Fireflies fulls?

Well, it’s enough to make a person scared of driving all over again.

Lots of love,

Sage

Something to Talk About

I’ll save you guys the excitement that was my day (nothing writing-related, although I had about five heart attacks over calls and e-mails thinking they would be news on that front).

YA Highway has a Road Trip Wednesday topic: Let’s Give ‘Em Something to Talk About. (I do love that song, btw)  “What’s everyone’s reaction when they find out you’re writing a book?”

 “Oh, that’s so cool.  I always wanted to write a book.”

“When’s it coming out?”

“You should write my story.” (Story of the person and story they came up with)

“So that character is based on you?” (or someone else I know.  “Dad” = my dad, “Mom” = my mom, all siblings = my sister, etc.)

“Why does it take so long to get published?”

And of course,

“So, when you’re as famous as JK Rowling….”