Thursday, August 30, 2012

Mountains! And trees! And scenery!

I'm so not kidding about the snow.  Or the 1,000,000 buffalo.
Taken in Yellowstone, June 2011.


So, husband and I love to travel.  Every kind of traveling - domestic, international, cities, wilderness, beaches, mountains, cruises, camping... 

In 2010, we discovered The Roap Trip.  I don't mean rolling a couple hours down the road to the next big city, but full-out, 2-3 week, 6000 mile, live-out-of-the-car road trips.  We spent most of the month of August that year seeing places neither of us had seen before. 



The grand total:

-14 states
-6500 miles
-8 National Parks
-1,000,000 buffalo
-1 torrential, monsoon-like downpour in Navajo country
-1 homage to Laura Ingalls Wilder
-8 nights in a tent
-15 Subway sandwich stops
-1 incident of overheated brakes
-14,000+ feet above sealevel
-(result: 1 bout of altitude sickness)
-1 lost hubcap in the Middle of Nowhere, Kansas (speaking of hubcaps, did you how freaking expensive those things are!?)

It was amazing.  As a writer, I know there have to be better words to describe it, but "amazing" is the word I always come back to. 

In fact, it was so amazing that we went back to Grand Teton and Yellowstone in June of 2011 (when I was 6 months pregnant).  (And there was snow.  And we slept in a tent.  Did I mention the snow?  LOTS of snow.  In June.  And I was pregnant.  So I had to pee a lot at night.  That part wasn't fun.  But the rest was amazing.) 

There is a point to this post, I swear.  As a result of all this road-tripping, I remembered how much I love wild places.  My favorite escape from the mundane is pulling up the National Park Service webcams.  From my computer, in between filling in spreadsheets and checking my email, I can watch the seasons change in Rocky Mountain NP, or the sun rise over the Grand Canyon, or Old Faithful erupt at Yellowstone.  I pull up the cameras at Glacier and Yosemite and daydream about a future road trip. 

There's just something so freeing about knowing that I could get in my car and be at one of these incredible places.  Just head west on I-70, and surround myself with peace and beauty and wonder. 

(And, yes, I'm fairly certain I read Laura Ingalls Wilder a few too many times as a child. I'm just thankful cars are faster than covered wagons!)


Tuesday, August 28, 2012

About Me and blah blah blah

While I'm trying to figure out all the nifty things I can do to fix this blog up, I'll talk about myself.  Because I'm the most interesting woman in the world.  Haha.   

Anyhow....I'm thirtysomething, married, have a sweet baby girl (who will be one year old in just a few weeks!), and have a houseful of cats.

When I'm not writing, I'm working at a non-profit, playing with my daughter, pretending to garden (as in, I plant a lot of stuff but get too lazy to weed or water very often), figure skating, hiking, traveling (when the $ allows), watching tv or movies with the husband, letting the husband drag me to social events (I married an extrovert...which is good, or I'd be a crazy cat lady who stayed home all the time watching Hoarders), and doing all that boring housework that never seems to be finished.

I write upper middle grade contemporary fiction.  I have one shelved novel, one complete novel I need to resume querying on, one novel in revisions, and one I need to begin outlining.  The three books I've written have all been pantsed, NaNoWriMo-style.  I have big plans for turning myself into a plotter for the next WIP...we'll see how that goes. ;)

One day I'd love to try my hand at contemporary YA and at either MG or YA historical fiction.  YA scares me a bit because of all the sexybits, and historical scares me because I have a masters in US history and I know exactly how much research I'd make myself do before started writing.  And properly cited footnotes.  Yeah, I'd have to get over that.  One day.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Jumping in...again

I keep saying I'll start a new blog.  I'm good at starting blogs, and not so great at keeping up with them.  I've left a graveyard of abandoned blogs behind me. 

This one will be different!

(I hope.)