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Stopping by quick, quick to say–only 4.5 pages today, but I wrestled with some knotty issues and I think got them combed straight. Big battle is looming, almost at hand.

The fella and sundry relatives (including the boy) have gone to Austin to see one of the sundries get sworn in as a state representative. I have to finish this book. I would go to visit with all the relations, but I’m not into politics so much. So I wish them all luck, and get back to the book.

Go look at the pictures, if you haven’t.

Thanksgiving isn’t quite here, but we’re staying home with the boys (of all varieties–plus a couple of girlfriends) and I’ll probably be spending most of the time cooking (at least before Thursday), so I figure I’ll get my “Thankful” blog post in now.

So, first of all, I am supremely, supremely thankful that Hurricane Ike didn’t leave us homeless like it did so many of our friends and co-workers. And that we have been able to help the little bit we have.

I’m thankful for my new book contract, that I’ll have a book coming out in the new year and two more to write. (Ack!–but I’m still thankful.) I’m thankful for my readers. Y’all are the bestest.

I’m thankful for my family. I’m thankful that the spouse is in a (so far) recession-proof “industry.” When people lose jobs, they tend to go back to school to learn how to do new stuff. Those who run the schools are needed. I’m thankful the kids are all in education too. I’m thankful my parents are (mostly) in the “cheerful” stage of memory loss, and that my sister is close by.

I’m thankful the island is sorta starting to get itself put back together. I’m trying to do business here, to support the folks struggling to hang in there. Mostly, I can. I think I can even get new lenses for my glasses here. I’m grateful I can still see. (Went to the opthalmalotlorthekrhksjht… okay, I got lost in there, somewhere. The eye doctor. Went today. I’m still a little sun-sensitive… but I can see!)

It really has been a good year. Maybe even a great year. Lots of ups and downs, but I think the ups are winning.

So, what are you thankful for?

Here I am in New York. No Pictures, because I am using the fella’s laptop and I don’t know if I can download pictures. Besides, I haven’t taken any yet. So–

This is my second time (ever) in NYC. The first time was five or six years ago, so needless to say, we don’t come here often. Impressions:

Manhattan is an island, not a sand bar, like the island I live on. Lots of water and lots of other islands. Not much in the way of surf–but then I haven’t been out to the “beach” islands.

There doesn’t appear to be any such thing as traffic lanes. If a driver can squeeze a car into a space, he squeezes, forget where the lines are painted on the street.

Lots and lots of people, lots of languages. Galveston has as much variety, but not nearly as much quantity.

It’s really hard to sleep on an airplane.

We got up way, way before dawn so we could drive across Houston to the Other airport to catch an early flight. It is actually possible to avoid all traffic slowdowns if you’re crossing downtown at 5 a.m. And we had to leave the island at 4 a.m. to get to downtown Houston by 5. Yes, it is that far. Houston comes all the way out to meet us (okay, there are nearly a dozen little towns/suburbs once you reach Galveston County, but it’s city all the way.) I kept trying to sleep on the plane, but it kept not working.

We checked into our hotel and rode the subway down to Chinatown for lunch, because I was in the mood for Chinese. We wandered around and goggled at the buildings and stuff in the stores and such. NYC doesn’t have as much Chinese-styled architecture as San Francisco, where I was back in July/August. (This laptop keyboard is weird. Keep missing letters and spaces.)

We rode the subway back to Times Square, where our hotel is, and went looking for a drugstore or some place where we could get drinks and stuff for the room. Then I took a nap. I was really tired, and wanted to be able to stay awake. Because we went to see Spamalot. (Or is it Spamalot!?)

It was totally wonderful. Loved “The Song that Goes Like This” and “What happened to My Part?” and–well, just all of it. Clay Aiken was “Brave” Sir Robin. One of the understudies did Lancelot, and he was so good I’m scared to think what the –overstudy?–the regular guy would do with it.

Anyway, it was heaps of fun. And then we went out to dinner at a Brasilian restaurant, Brazil Brazil. That was quite good too.

Today will be a full day–not quite sure what it will be full with, but… I might be able to report back tomorrow. If I can figure out how to get on line, and stuff.

I am sitting in my parents’ house in a little town SE of Austin, watching Hurricane Ike on the Weather Channel. I like the Weather Channel, because their reporters are actually on Galveston Island. In fact, they’re staying in a hotel not far from my house. So when they do their live reports from the seawall, I can see how high the waves are splashing up, and how high the water is coming over the seawall, and see just how likely it is that my house is underwater.

So far, the waves are just splashing. But the surge hasn’t hit yet. If the surge is 25 feet, like they’re talking, my house will probably be under water, up to the roof. We’re all safely tucked away. I have all our pictures in boxes in the back of my SUV, and I brought the computer with me. But the thought of losing everything else we own gives me a pang. However–they’re only things. The son went to visit his girlfriend and took the granddog, who is staying in an evacuation kennel because she can’t stay in the dorms.

I’m taking the chance to help out the parents. Took Mama shopping for upholstery fabric to get her living room chairs recovered. They haven’t been re-done in 30 years. Now if I can just make sure she remembers which was the perfect fabric we picked out. (I wrote it down, and marked the page in the book. Now need to show my sister and niece, so they can make sure.)

Be praying for the idiots who stayed on the island–about 40% of the population, from what the news is saying. And they’re saying this hurricane could be bigger than “The Big One” that hit in 1900 (on my birthday).

My sister is out on a cruise ship which will linger off Cozumel until the port opens again–probably coming back in a day after they were originally scheduled. My other sister’s car is in my garage, because the one on the cruise ship drove it down. So if our house goes, the borrowed car will go too. Oh well. So, yeah. Prayers. For people first, then for, well, stuff. I’m safe. The family is safe. What else do we need? Bless you all.

Just a quick post here to let y’all know that–while at the moment Hurricane Ike is forecast to land a little north of Matagorda Bay, Ike is big enough that his outside edge will scrape the island pretty hard. Least little bit of turn to the north, and we’ll get hit even harder, so I’m packing up the computer and all my totebags with manuscripts, and my two portable hard drives and my CDs of grandbaby pictures, and I’m heading for Austin.

The boy is already gone with the granddog to see his girlfriend in Waco. Need to plug in the head editor’s phone number so I can call and let them know I’m not coming in…

Wish us luck. We’re driving out tonight. Got to pack.

Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s not writer’s block. I don’t get that very much. I do, however, suffer tremendously from The Lazies, and from The Stupids. (The Lazies are pretty much self-explanatory. The Stupids–that’s where your characters are stupid, the dialogue is stupid, the narrative is Stupid, the Plot is STupid, and EVERYTHING IS JUST STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!) (Have you ever noticed how stupid-sounding the word “stupid” is? Especially when you say it three times fast?)

There is also another category of “not writing,” however. It’s the “I don’t know exactly where the story needs to go next, and I need to not-think about it,” category.

Yeah. I know. That doesn’t sound real…professional. It sounds all Procrastination-y, and Making-Excuses-ish. But…

I have found that sometimes I need to back off and let the swamp–er, the subconscious–(okay, yeah, the swamp. My subconscious is a swamp, okay?) have the story for a while and chew on it. (My swamp has alligators. They chew things.) Sometimes, I need to consciously not-think about a story, let the swamp have its way with it, and then when I go back, the story is there and ready to go, and if I try to force it when it needs to go to the swamp and ferment a while, it’s worse than if I ignore the story and don’t think about it and don’t write it. If I let it go a day or two, then I get farther when I come back than if I sat at the desk and Made myself write. Makes no sense, but there it is.

And yet… maybe I AM just being lazy, and avoiding the work. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. Do I need to be castigating myself for laziness, or am I actually accomplishing something, even if it might not look like it?

This is where I’ve been the last day or two. I got a whole 2.5 pages written yesterday. That’s it. Wrote nothing at all on Monday. Today, I didn’t even go sit down at the desk–except to put on my socks. Because I’m not really sure where the story needs to go next. Do I need to write a time passage-transition scene? Do I need some other scene? The book is too dang long already. I need to have a villain scene in here somewhere soon–some kind of adventure/danger-type scene. But I have no idea what it ought to be, or whether it ought to be the real villain or the red-herring villain. Or maybe the real villain manipulating the red-herring villain. Or the RH villain doing something, and the real villain gloating. Or something completely out of left field. This is one of the things that my swamp does really well–come up with ideas for this sort of thing, so I kind of think this isn’t just the Lazies–though they probably do play in here a little…

I have discovered some things my hero needs to realize, and one thing my heroine needs to learn, so that’s been good. It’s just time to figure out some specifics, and now that the swamp has had time to chomp on things a bit, I may need to do some free-writing to figure out what exactly needs to happen next. Maybe the writing will come faster.

Since Gustav turned out to be a non-event here–no evacuation order for the island or anything–I went swimming with the guys Sunday. It was fun. Didn’t even have big waves. It was the kind of ocean swimming I love best. The older son came down for a visit, and the two boys went out to try to ride the skim board on Saturday. We have scraped knees–sand will really take the hide off you–and sore ankles. There were some pretty spectacular falls. I laughed. We sent the older son home to Dallas Sunday a.m., though, just in case Gustav decided to skim along the coast. He did help clear out the garage so the new car could fit in. But as it turned out, we didn’t even get any rain. (pout) We’re still low on rainfall for the year.

We did get some big shells. I found my biggest clump of rose-colored barnacles yet. Big as my fist. I was out walking with Dolly the granddog–let her off the leash so she could run fast–and had fun trying to hang onto my shells and get her back on the leash. She did come back and hold still for me to do it–but she played “can’t catch me” at least once, first.

My internet is out at home. I have to take the computer in somewhere to get it fixed. Grr. And I’m not even sure where to take it. Haven’t been happy with the 2 places we’ve taken the boy’s computer so far. Best Buy may be next on the list.

And I have to go to the dentist tomorrow morning. Had a dumb filling come out. Maybe I’ll have time to take the computer somewhere after that. May as well “waste” the whole morning. Maybe I can get LOTS written on Friday. I can only try. Maybe by then, I’ll know what I need to be writing…

Gussie will just not make up his mind. While we anxiously wait to hear whether he’s going to smack down New Orleans again, or turn left and try to blow our little island away, Gustav is out messing around with Cuba, heading for the Gulf. Folks are shutting things down, just in case, so they don’t have to come back and do it over the holiday.

I haven’t been out to the Seawall yet today, but yesterday, there was no wind whatsoever. The water was like glass. We’ll see what the next few days hold.

Today was a better writing day. I got 5.5 pages written.

I would have done more, but I had to stop early to head out to lunch with the newsroom folks because the Mainland Editor has taken a new (better paying) job, and today was his last day. Lunch was at the Original Mexican Cafe (Restaurant?), and I had some excellent fish tacos (fried, battered fish with crispy corn tortilla shells–I’m amazed at the variety in fish tacos). It’s in an old house in the historic East End, not far from the medical school, and there’s NO parking. I did finally find an easy-to-get-into spot about a block away, in the shade, even. And then I had to go to work. I have had lunch out several days this week. I guess I need to go ride the bike tonight to make up for some of that, huh?

The older son is flying down tonight to pick up our excess car. With one car per driver, when you add a car, you get an extra one. Better to let him have it than trade it in and get virtually nothing on the trade-in. We will see whether he has to evacuate with us.

Off to put more pictures in for Monday’s Applause section…

Not such good writing day today. Got 2.5 pages. Sigh. Much of it probably cuttable. Mostly transition-type stuff, which sometimes you need, but… Tomorrow, can go visit the dead zone. Play with metal machine cog critters. Need to give them cogs.

Beach was beachy. Saw a couple of catfish just washed up lying dead on the beach. Lots of crab prints. Lots of crabs–didn’t pay attention before. A guy had a couple of St. Bernards out walking–they looked like they had played all they could stand to play and were almost too tired to walk home again. The water was ultra calm. No signs whatsoever of Gustav.

Boring blog post. Sorry. Feeling boring today.