Clover Autrey

So my neighbor stops by last night and says, "I'm returning something to your boys." He hands me a half eaten dill pickle, which my 13 year old threw over the fence into their pool. Of course he denies it, even though there are three witnesses (his brothers) that say he did it. I apologize. I make him apologize, even though he claims innocence, but then, he is ALWAYS innocent. I don't know how it happened but my house has become THAT house. You know, that house that always has a gang of boys hanging around it with weeds a mile high, that all the neighbors are just estimating the years til all the boys grow up and leave. All I really need is a rusty major appliance and the back seat from a truck to sit out on my front porch and I'm set.

But to at least make amends for my shabby yard, I went out this morning to mow the weeds. The grass doesn't need mowing yet, just the weeds since we didn't pretreat. But when the mower we bought just last year started smoking to high heaven, I had to use the old one. It works fine as long as you pull it backwards, until it just quits for an hour or so. So the yard is half-way done now, the tallest weeds gone. Oh, man, my reputation of being THAT neighbor is fixed. Oh well, maybe I should embrace it.

So I pretty much crashed through February. Midway through, I realized what was happening as I'd seen my mom do it several times. She puts on these great weddings, pretty much single-handedly and for 3 to 4 months, she just goes, goes, goes, riding a crest of adrenaline. Then when it is over, she pretty much sleeps through the following month.

February for me was like that. I had no energy, no motivation, no desire. I pretty much went through the motions of getting the kids to their activities and going to work, and sleeping whenever possible. Even answering emails was too much of a bother. Isn't that terrible? Until I put it together and realized I was just crashing from doing soooo much November through January. Literally. One month isn't too much to just lay low and recover after all.

I have been myspacing, though, mostly as an attempt to network, so that when I do finally get that break into the publishing world, I'll have a base to start with. I put a free short story up there to garner some interest as well. To read it go here

"When Jake Matthews walked out the door for his early morning run, he had no idea he’d be dead in twenty-three minutes. Nor that it would begin the biggest adventure of his life."

I jotted this down this morning. I've been working on a book off and on for a couple of years. You know, it's that book, the one that won't go away, that you have completely plotted out and know it inside and out, yet it is just too big of an idea to throw yourself completely into at this time in your life, so it percolates, always there, but never quite right, even while I'm actually working on it between other projects. The beginning, those first few crucial lines have never been right. I've rewritten them a quintillion times, but today I thought I had something good. I didn't realize how right until my 15 year old daughter came in and saw my scratchy lines, lying on my desk and startled me by saying, "Is this a life after death thing? or does he have an adventure in only 23 minutes?" I had hooked her. She had to know. So much so that instead of running off to do her own thing, she sat down at my computer while I pulled up the first chapter (all that's written so far) and she read it right then and there.

Yeah, I'm smiling.

So what's been your favorite first lines that hooked you?

I finished reading Eragon at the hospital. It was better than I expected. It followed the standard fantasy pattern. Young farmland hero becomes the only person who can save the land (this time via being chosen by the dragon to be the Rider). Said young hero is taken under the wing of an aged and knowledgeable master/wizard type who teaches him a few things about magic, yet partway through the book will leave (usually being killed - as were Gandalf and Obi Wan), which forces the young hero to muddle through and carry on the quest without any guidance, except for the aid of companions who gather round him (be it elves, wookies, droids, cargo smugglers, dwarves . . .) In Eragon's case, it is elves, dwarves, and the son of his enemy.

Nothing entirely new. However, I'm going to defend that very aspect by saying, "Who cares?" I, for one, like this format. It works. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And as far as changing the bathwater, Christopher Paolini has enough fresh cultures and ideas to make Eragon worth reading. It is enjoyable.

The aspects of this book that I truly find admirable and soaring above the rest are 1) the fact that it is a 15 year old boy writing about a 15 year old boy. The thoughts and feelings that come through are fascinating. Incredible true-to-life characterization on that part. Aspiring writers should read the book just to glean insights on how to build a character well, alone.

The second aspect is Mr. Paolini's courage in having his character ask and ponder huge moralistic questions and then leaving them without having answered them. Because in truth, these were the type of questions that there really is no answer for. A good example comes when Eragon, Murtaugh and Saphira are evading an army of their enemies and are attacked by a smaller party of bandits. Murtaugh consisely kills the bandit leader while he is on his knees. Eragon argues that that seemed like murder. Saphira councels the result would have been the same had Murtaugh, being a superior swordsman, fought the bandit again and killed him, and that they couldn't let the bandit go and tell the approaching enemy army of their whereabouts. Eragon mulls it over for quite some time, but what I love about it is the author never intrudes and stamps his own moral answers into it. He allows it to be one of those questions in life that each individual and situation has to answer for itself.

I can cite some adult writers who haven't been able to constrain themselves on that point. One of my most favorite authors comes to mind, not to name names, but it starts with a "G" and ends with a "oodkind" When Richard was standing on that slab of rock on that mountain, lecturing, it was as though Richard took a step back and the author jumped right into his body. I've never felt author instrucion so blatantly in my life. Though Mr. G knows the Wizard's First Rule well, he had forgotten the Writer's First Rule, which is: Readers are not stupid. We got your point. When good people do nothing, they are really allowing evil to prevail. We got it. We got it the first time Richard pointed it out. We got it when Kahlan conveyed it. We got it when Nicci realized it at the statues. We got it again when Nicci lectured about it in the stables. We got it when Zedd restated it. Believe me, we did not need Richard to go on and on and on for three chapters or more on that mountain. I love G's books. I will read anything he writes, but I am begging him to please remember the Writer's First Rule. We got it. Terry Goodkind's page Christopher Paolini's page

Chase is home. No more dragging myself to the hospital every other day that I don't work. I can actually spend a few moments time with my other children. It is such a relief, such a release of tension. I never want to go through this again. C's liver better keep healthy.