Charlene Teglia

The big holiday weekend approaches, and instead of planning swimming and picnic playtime, we are contemplating annihilation.

We have an ant and wasp problem here. We had a guy come out and spray earlier in the spring, but the bugs are not deterred. Wasps are nesting in the gazebo and the siding of the house and ant hills are every-freaking-where. There are lots of chemicals for insect death squads, but we don't want to harm other creatures in the yard, the dragonflies and butterflies and birds and frogs. And kids and cat. This has posed A Problem. I want the wasps and ants to die screaming but not hurt anything else in the process. I need the kinder, gentler bringer of death.

Turns out there is an organic spray for wasps and yellow jackets which we'll be trying out. And if you mix Borax with sugar, that's supposedly effective for the ants and seems like the best combo of ant-ageddon with the least environmental impact.

This should be interesting. Anybody out there have stories of organic success rooting out ants and wasps? And in any case, enjoy the holiday weekend. Preferably without ants in your picnic or unpleasant stinging episodes.

As a sign that I spent a lot of time working in the garden lately, last night I had gardening dreams. I dreamed that the people who brought over their tractor to till up our plot came back with lots and lots of starter plants. And I was torn between genuine gratitude (it was a lovely and thoughtful gesture) and wondering where to PUT it all because our garden may be big, but it's full. Well, almost full; I have one row left to dedicate to all the varieties of herbs. And they brought me kittens. I couldn't say no to starter plants or kittens, but now I had to sort them out and settle them somewhere.

It's the same with ideas. Lately I've been trying to figure out what I should focus on after the two books on the table, and I have a bazillion ideas. Like the dream kittens and starter plants, book ideas need space and attention to grow and flourish. Hopefully my mind is well-mulched with all sorts of odd bits of information and experiences to give the book ideas fertile soil and let them establish strong roots. But the brain can only hold so much at a time, much like a garden row can only grow one thing at a time, after which it's time to re-mulch and rotate. You can't grow the same thing in the same place over and over. It exhausts the soil. And my brain has been somewhat exhausted by writing in one genre for some time.

The problem of how to rotate between genres has been a struggle for me for years now. You establish a name and people link expectations to it. Reader confusion is bad, and it takes time to establish a name in a genre, so the genre becomes the focus. This is especially problematic in romance, because if you want to build a name you have to write and release a lot of books close together. It might be possible to build a name in other genres with a book a year or every 18 months, but romance is more demanding. Tess Gerritsen blogged about how she changed genres from romance to suspense because she couldn't write more than a book a year. This means that the time it takes to write in multiple genres makes it very difficult to keep up one genre while starting another, unless you are Paperback Writer.

I've tried to work around this by writing in different subgenres; I've done contemporary, historical fantasy, time travel, and paranormal/urban fantasy romances. I'm most at home in the paranormal/urban fantasy romance subgenre. But the problem remains; my garden is full and I have all these adorable kittens and tempting starter varieties that want my attention, too. And I need to find a way to rotate so that my brain is enriched instead of exhausted without losing the name I've built in one genre and without working 24 hours a day.

It's a problem. But it's a benign problem, in that all the things that want to come and grow in my mental garden are good ones and I want to somehow accommodate them all. And I think if I can figure it out, the rotation will bring good things to the established genre and a new one. If nothing else, the dream showed me that the possibilities are friendly and well-intentioned and really, who can say no to a kitten or a new kind of plant?

For those who've asked, garden pictures! Note my helpers, a small child and a cat. And Gardenia, the Gardening Bear*. (Not pictured: the two nice gentlemen who rototilled the garden plot with a tractor and the husband who brought me bales of straw and the older child who helped spread straw and plant marigolds) The pot of petunias next to the swim shoes I'm wearing in the garden (because it's wet in there in the mornings, that's why) came from a neighbor. Came out one day and found petunia starters saying "pot us". We have awesome neighbors.

The garden process is much like the process of writing a book. The idea, it's so entrancing! Imagine the fresh fruit and vegetables! (And if you have never had fresh-picked peas, really, you don't even know what to imagine.) Choosing and ordering organic seeds and heritage strains to try out, wondering what they'll taste like. Considering the structural requirements, laying out a plot, getting it tilled and mulching. The little starter seeds in their tiny pots, so manageable. You can carry the whole baby garden in your hands.

And then it goes to the next stage. Bales of straw everywhere. Stakes and netting and tools. Tomato cages. Stringing the rows, spacing everything out, drawing and redrawing plans to make sure there's enough room. Planting and mulching starters and after days of work, seeing how much is left to do and feeling hopeless.

It was such a good idea, but it grew and got out of hand. It can't be picked up and carried around anymore, it's too big. It has a life of its own. There's so much work left to do after days of labor and it's overwhelming. It will never be done, never.

You keep throwing yourself at it, getting the hoe and turning earth and laying down straw and planting seeds, carefully spaced and with a label. And then, suddenly, it is really truly almost done. The peas are planted in twin rows next to two barrels of potatoes (which are full of green leaves and flourishing), and there's netting between two stakes for them to climb. The beans have their staked net to climb, too. Carrots and radishes are planted in neat rows, and broccoli is germinating and pepper plants are thriving in the heat while the squash looks wilty. Berries are ripening, and before long the zucchini will appear and I will have to sneak it onto my neighbor's decks in the dark of night to get rid of the excess.

Just like that, it's a garden. Just like that, it's a book. When the mess of assembling all the various parts is strewn around and some things are growing faster than you can get them into the ground, it's frantic and enormous and complicated. And then it isn't. Then it's a series of neat orderly rows, all growing as designed, leading to early harvests of berries and radishes and rhubarb. Or it's a neat series of scenes building on each other as designed, leading to the inevitable conclusion.

The trick to both is to not give up in the middle stage. Just keep picking up the tools and throwing yourself at it.

*If you want your own gardening bear, visit the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory. All bears handmade and guaranteed for life, shipped in boxes with airholes so the bears can breathe until you unpack them.

In the follow-up to the TED talk linked below, Sir Ken Robinson calls for an education revolution that's personalized for individual strengths. And his most recent book addresses the issue of finding your natural talents and passion. It's a trend! Turns out that the same things adults need to deal with today's challenges are the tools we need to give our kids to deal with tomorrow's. 

All of which makes me feel better about the time I'm spending digging in dirt because I have a passion for gardening and for eating fresh produce. Unfortunately, deer share that passion so today I'm reapplying the
Liquid Fence to discourage them. 

What are you interested in? What are you good at? Have you done anything with it lately?

I've mentioned before that the situation in publishing is also the same in other industries, including education. Nobody knows what the future holds. Nobody knows what the picture will look like in 5 years, let alone 20 years. Here's a great TED talk that's well worth 20 minutes of your time on how we can
prepare people for the future we can't define.

The important part is that experts can't define it. Which means their guesses are just guesses, and your guess is just as valid. Maybe more so, for you. No expert can tell you if you should make this or that move for career longevity or security, but your gut can guide you very effectively. What do you most want to do from the list of available choices? 

You might as well trust your gut because nobody has perfected the art of telling the future. The old Microsoft slogan, "Where do you want to go today?" is a good one to adopt. And there's a lot less risk of being wrong when all the experts probably are, too.

Garden planting is underway, and I found myself doing the mental hamster wheel after the day's work was done. Did I water in the starters well enough? Did I space properly? Am I going to have to move the cantaloupe after all, because it will get too hot where it is?

The last time I planted out a garden, I pretty much did it with wild abandon. I planted pumpkins and zucchini too close together and they cross-bred, producing long orange squash and round green zuke-ish pumpkins. I called them pumkini and zumpkins and didn't try to eat or make jack-o-lanterns of the results. The results were unexpected but not catastrophic. And all the cats in the neighborhood ate the catnip to the ground and birds got all the strawberries and the tomatoes got out of control. I was okay with all of that. I didn't take it too seriously. It was just a garden and there was always next year to do things differently.

Then came small children and special needs and life became very different. Everything became really damn serious and had to be done right the first time Or Else, and there was no time or energy for a veggie garden, although I did plant flowers which pretty much just needed to be stuck in the ground.

This is the first real garden after kids, and it's kind of amazing to me how that serious attitude has filtered into everything and changed my perspective. I very carefully planned the lay-out so that no squash variety would unwittingly crossbreed with another. I measured the space between the blueberry bushes and
I hauled a wheelbarrow load of pine needles to mulch around them. There are stakes running up and down the rows with string marking them for straight planting, and much thought went into how to lay out soaker hoses between rows for easy and efficient watering.

Part of the seriousness is because this garden is intended to be food-producing. In our efforts to live a more sustainable life and to be healthier, it makes sense to grow our own produce. But I had to remind myself this morning, as I fought the urge to run out at dawn and measure my spacing in case I'd miscalculated and left some things too crowded, that it's not life or death. It's a garden, and there's always next year. Some of the varieties I'm experimenting with will do well and others won't and it's all a learning experience that I can build on next year.

This is true for books, too. Books suffer from overplanning and constant digging up and transplanting scenes and paragraphs lest the initial placement turn out to be wrong. Books are organic and they grow as part of the process. Things change. Unexpected cross-pollinations happen and while the results might be surprising, they aren't the end of the world. Different than expected doesn't mean bad or wrong.

When you are dealing with things that have a life of their own, whether a book or a child or a garden, taking it too seriously and trying to impose too much control is a "serious" problem that can be solved by just lightening up a little. Books get done and do well or do not and writers go on to write new ones. Kids manage to survive their parenting and go on to have their own kids who they hopefully don't stand over with a yardstick to see if they're measuring up. Gardens grow and there will be weeds and pests and birds to contend with and possibly potato blight but in the end, there will still be harvest season and covering it over with mulch and winter and spring where it all starts up again.

It's all the miracle of life, which is much too short and amazing to waste running on mental hamster wheels, second-guessing every damn thing.

1. Via Facebook, I was pointed to this free pattern for making a microwavable buckwheat pillow. This is exactly what I need for our cold-sensitive cat, so I'm making it in a cat-sized rectangle. I'll probably substitute catnip for the lavender and make it out of the same soft fabric that makes the Snuggie his blankie of choice.

2. Barbara Sher's popular book Wishcraft is free to read online. Read and (re)discover what you want.

3. Online
thesaurus and
dictionaries help you find the right word.

4. Keep kids busy over the summer building their reading skills at Starfall.

5. Plan and design your virtual garden before you start digging in real dirt. (Requires Shockwave plugin)

There's a lot of change and unrest in publishing. Kind of like the rest of the world. Try to point to an industry that isn't experiencing this. But publishing is being impacted by various forces that include new technologies, changing buying habits, rising costs of doing business. The changes are eliminating bad practices and inefficient businesses because they simply can't survive in the current environment. When things are easier, you can get away with more. The harder it gets, the less this is true. This isn't necessarily bad. Weeding out bad practices is good in the long run.

The changes create new opportunities. Some markets are shrinking but new ones have come up that show a lot of promise. Stories aren't going out of style. Writing and publishing isn't going to cease to exist, but when you see how content can be manipulated on a touch-screen like the iPad, you see that how people experience content is changing in a big way. And so are the delivery systems. Publishing is a delivery system for content that writers produce, but what that means in ten years may look very different from how it looks today.

I don't believe for a minute that printed books are going away. Not any time soon, at least. The people who are declaring NY dead are premature at best. And the people who think publishers don't add real value are probably in for some surprises, too. This doesn't mean that an enterprising author can't learn needed skills to design and format their work, and you don't get to be pro level without learning to self-edit. (Which doesn't mean editors don't add value; but it's also true that not all editors are equal and failure to provide real value happens in all positions.)

But while I don't think printed books are going away, you can't ignore the fact that it's now possible to walk up to a book vending machine and order a title that's printed while you wait. Content delivery change.

What does all this mean for writers? Well, probably publishers are going to try to take as many rights as they can get for as long as they can get them to exploit these new options. It means that reversion of rights becomes very tricky when a book is 'in print' if you can buy it through Google Books or an Espresso Book Machine, but having rights tied up may not be to an author's advantage when where the sales happen and where the revenue is is subject to change and the author can't move a title from a position of trickling sales to where the sales are surging.

I think publishers and authors alike will have to be light on our feet, able to change direction, innovate, adapt. We'll all have to add real value, because nothing else will survive. What it means to be an author or publisher is changing. Being small may be more advantageous than being big; a large company has so much entrenched in old business models that change is difficult and slow. None of this is any different than it was five years ago when I had my first book out in stores, but the economic pressures have become significant and the new technologies have gained ground during that time.

I think if publishers and authors see each other as valued partners in changing times, the results will be very different than if we see each other as enemies. We're all still in the same business; content delivery. We just have to adjust our thinking about what that means and partner with people who share our vision.

The garden's been mulched and tilled and planting has begun. Since I'm in garden layout mode, and so many people are doing gardens this year, I thought I'd do 5 Gardening Things for today's blog post.

1. Remember to transition indoor or greenhouse starter plants before planting them out. Set outdoors in a sheltered spot while they adjust to outdoor conditions. Keep an eye on moisture as they will dry out faster then they do indoors. If there's a frost, move them back inside or cover them for the night. A week is best but depending on your climate, 3-4 transition days is probably enough.

2. Check your plants' space requirements before planting to make sure you allow enough room for the mature plant and to make tending/harvesting easy.

3. Make your rows wide enough to easily walk through and tend/harvest plants.

4. Spread straw between plants and in the rows to help the ground retain moisture and keep weeds down. Bonus: the straw mulches in and makes nice compost for next year's garden.

5. Plant marigolds around your tomatoes and onions around your lettuce and carrots to discourage pests.

My PC laptop officially reached the "I'm just not going to work anymore" stage. So I put all the crap I'd saved to the desktop in dropbox, and it was nearly that easy to switch. The husband found a tool to synch my browser settings, and it took about a minute to tell the mail program where to find my mail. It was really fast and painless.

And now I'm getting used to the cord being on the opposite side and a slightly different keyboard (although I like the springyness of it) and remembering to hit the apple key to do keyboard shortcuts. Mainly I'm noticing that life is easier on a Mac. I actually started using the Macbook last week for Drupal work, which gave me some transition time, but I was really hoping to finish books in progress on the other laptop. I didn't want to change tools in process, but now that change has been forced on me, I'm glad. Sometimes it's good to change.

Yes, I'm doing some Drupal work. I've been thinking long and hard about where publishing is and where I am as a writer and what my goals are, and I decided that one of the best things I could do for myself was to find a way to earn money that wouldn't require 50 hours a week and all my brain power, leaving nothing for writing. But would, at part time, offset the vagaries of publishing and allow me to write what I wanted to and not worry about whether or not it sold, and not feel pressured financially to take a deal, any deal, whether it was good for me or not. I decided that over a year ago (Drupal has a steepish learning curve) and now I'm doing the work. Very part time. But it's had the wonderful unexpected effect of recharging my creativity. I'm getting scenes downloading from my brain, I'm getting new story ideas and plots and feeling very excited about a new project I can't wait to work on.

And what about Kindle, you may ask? Am I not thinking this is the answer? I think it's a path to explore, certainly, and now that I've read on an iPad, I think it's a game-changer. So yes, I will have 2 projects coming straight to Kindle/iPad, hopefully this summer. I've been around ebooks for too long to think this is a magic wand, but I do think it's a viable option to the writer willing and able to do a lot for themselves. And it will allow me to release ebooks in a very visible way while retaining the rights to them.

This is very much an experiment, and I see it as part of an overall approach to publishing that includes traditional routes. But for some projects it makes a lot of sense. My shiny exciting idea could only be done on an iPad, really.

There's a lot of change going on, in the world, in publishing. And like hanging onto the laptop that was blue-screening, really, sometimes it's better to just embrace the changes. They offer some pretty nice options.