The Cinnamon Invasion: Week 1

I’ve always enjoyed the holiday season, but this year it’s turning out to be something very different, and not necessarily in the merriest of ways.

Day 1
Thanksgiving had been a great day, full of family, laughter, football, dogs, and pie. I drove home that night through the unseasonably frigid temperatures and went to bed feeling full and content and loved. Then I woke the next morning and saw this creepy little thing perched by the television, staring me down. I recognized it as one of those disturbing “Elf on the Shelf” misfits, but the thing is -- I don't own one. I don’t mind saying I was a little freaked out. I mean, look at it. I know there are families that love to get all Pinterested up this time of year with stuff like this, but to have one of these awful things just show up in your house? Not cool. I went on with my day and did the best I could to ignore it, because there was no way I was going to touch the thing.

Day 2
I had almost forgotten about my interloping red bag of horrible when I went to bed Friday night and thought I was in the clear Saturday morning...until I walked into the kitchen and found it waiting for me. It sat on the kitchen table with the strangest handwritten note beside it: "I seek sanctuary. My Elven name is Clavicus Hrothgar, Overlord of the Darkness Guild. But perhaps it'd be best if you simply called me Cinnamon."

Cinnamon? I don’t know if that’s any less creepy than that other name. “Cinnamon” didn’t exactly specify what he needs sanctuary for, but I didn’t feel terribly compelled to grant it. Before I could tell him to get out of my house, he was gone. I didn’t see him again for the rest of the day.

Day 3
I found Cinnamon sitting vigilantly by the kitchen window this morning, quietly muttering to himself, "They're coming....they're coming....I know they're coming." This is not reassuring. I wish I had some idea who “they” are supposed to be.

Day 4
My first day back to work after the Thanksgiving break. I get home to find this scene.

 Oh, Cinnamon...I just...I don't even want to know....I can only hope all of this was enough to quiet whatever demons are plaguing your tormented elven spirit. Especially now that I have to finish off the leftover pie without any Reddi-Wip.


Day 5
For once there was no sign of Cinnamon when I woke up this morning, or when I got home from work in the evening. In fact, I had almost successfully banished the idea of him from my head altogether. Just when I was settling in for the evening, figuring I was finally in the clear, I heard the television turn on all by itself, which never happens because my house isn’t haunted. I walked to the living room to see what the deal was and turn it off when I heard a low, threatening growl coming from the edge of the coffee table behind me: "You will NOT. Touch that remote."

Day 6
After what I now think of as The Charlie Brown Incident, my sleep last night was frequently interrupted by unsettling nightmares. By the time I woke, I'd all but decided to send Cinnamon on his way, maybe even with the trash pick-up tomorrow. When I got out of bed to do some early work on revisions I found this, and noticed a recently recorded voice memo on my phone: "You didn't know I can see your dreams, did you? Do you ever want to work on your clever little story again? I think a few weeks of sanctuary would be a fair trade for your new password. Or, should I say, OUR new password."

What choice do I really have? And again, I'm wondering: Sanctuary from who? Or what? If whatever he’s hiding from would get him out of my life, I’d almost be ready to put up a neon sign outside the front door to guide the way.

Day 7
There was no sign of Cinnamon this morning. I’m learning to trust the mild anxiety that follows when that happens. Sure enough, I find another message on the iPad when I get home. Paraphrased, because it was kind of scattered and written in more fonts than I knew the iPad had available: "Haha I found the candy hidden in the bathroom and finished it off! It tasted awful but I feel great! I'm going on a pizza run, back later!!"

Is Cinnamon gone forever, or will tonight just be a temporary respite for me? Tune in next week to find out!!

Blog Award

A long, long time ago -- something like three weeks now -- I was tagged by the one and only Rachel Simon to answer some writer-type questions. At the time I was knee-deep in NaNoWriMo 2014 and didn't have the physical or mental or emotional capacity to put together anything resembling a coherent blog post. But, since this happened a few days ago...

...I'm in a much better place for posting. So thanks for the tag Rachel, and sorry for the delay. Here we go:

Describe your current WIP (work in progress) in 6 words.
"Self-discovery prompted by personal tragedy."

Who was the first fictional character you had a crush on?
I had to think hard about this, because the reading I did growing up wasn't exactly populated with crushworthy characters. I was about to give up on this question and pass until I remembered my devotion to the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland when I was about five. That standard at such a young age ruined all other blondes for me.

What authors would you like to do a panel with, and why? 
Easiest question on the list -- the rest of Team Howland. Why? Because we're collectively that awesome and our panel would be historic.

What is your favorite beverage to have when writing / revising? 
This was given to me as two separate questions, but I'm combining them because they're the same answer: Diet Mountain Dew. Or Orange Vitamin Water Zero in the summer, when I don't need to rely on the caffeine quite as much.

If you could describe your main character as a candy, what would it be and why? 
I would choose a fictional candy -- Littmus Lozenges from Because of Winn-Dixie. Everyone in the book described them as being sweet, but containing a buried sorrow. I think that describes my character Molly very well.

Did you ever change a character's name in any of your works? And from what to what?
Yes. In a previous (and soon to be reactivated) manuscript, I changed one character from a "Jake" to a "Will," because his best friend also had a "J" name and it wasn't working. Ironically, since Rachel was the person who tagged me for this, I am about to change the name of a character in my current manuscript from Rachel to something else I haven't decided on yet. No offense Rachel, but I keep seeing a former student named Rachel when the character comes up in the story, and that student is in no way related to the character so it's messing with my head.

If you could describe your WIP in a song, what would it be?
There are so many songs on my Following Infinity writing playlist I feel perfectly capture different moments or themes, so it's difficult to pick one. But after a scroll through the 254 songs on that playlist, I think one of the best overall would be "Life Must Go On" by Alter Bridge, both for the lyrical themes and the musical tone. And trust me, since this is a music question, I put some serious thought into my answer.

What is your main character's astrological sign?
I honestly have no idea. I don't even know when her birthday is specifically, though I do know it isn't between early October and New Year's Day.

If you could re-cast your favorite movie for today's audience, who would play who? 
I'd have a heck of a time even narrowing down to one favorite movie, though since one of my current favorites would still be "The Avengers" and that's already pretty recent, I don't think any recasting would be necessary.

Since I cut my list down to nine questions instead of ten by combining two of them, I'm going to borrow one of the questions Rachel had to answer on her blog to complete my list:

If you could have dinner with any author, alive or deceased, who would it be and why?
I would go with Justin Cronin on this one. Because: A) He writes with amazing voice. B) Everything I've seen about him -- from his interviews to his tweets and Facebook posts to how he was at his book signing -- convinces me that he's just a really good guy. C) I could sit at that table and go all "Chris Farley Show" on him: "Remember...remember that time when you wrote The Twelve? And that time when you came to Minneapolis and you did a book signing in Roseville? And I was there? And I sat in the third row, and you were awesome? And then you signed all of our books, and remember when I said I was a teacher who wanted to be a writer, and you said, 'Well you know, I also started out teaching before I did this?'"

That was AWESOME!

The 777 Challenge

The 777 challenge is when one author challenges others to post seven lines of text, seven lines down, on the seventh page of a work in progress. Early this morning I discovered I’d been tagged for a 777 post by my agent sister, the one and only Rachel Simon. I’m more than willing to participate and post my seven lines of text, because they turn out to be seven lines I really like.

In case you may have missed my several dozen earlier references to it here on the blog, Following Infinity is a literary-leaning contemporary middle grade novel I’m currently revising with the insightful guidance of my agent. In this scene, my main character, a thirteen-year-old girl named Molly, is attending the funeral of her younger brother, Michael.

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The pastor gave a sermon about Michael’s life that kind of annoyed me. You could tell he was probably reading from some pastor book like Things to Say at a Child’s Funeral and plugging in details about Michael along the way to make it sound like he knew him, like how much he liked roller coasters, or soccer, or collecting rocks. Sometimes he’d tell a funny Michael story or make a joke to break some of the tension, and everyone would laugh more than the joke deserved. I hated that. The laughter was a moment of relief, but it hurt even more when the relief passed.

Most of the crowd followed us to the cemetery when the service ended, an easy walk from the church. The afternoon sky was a deep blue, broken up by the kind of heavy clouds you see on a clear day in October.

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Hope you enjoyed that little sample of the manuscript. Thanks for tagging me and putting up your seven lines, Rachel! I'm really looking forward to the day I'll have all of our Team Howland titles sitting next to each other on a bookshelf in my house.

And now a brief update. If you had read my previous post about NaNoWriMo 2014, I’d outlined some plans I had coming together regarding my Following Infinity revisions, and how I planned to take advantage of all the work to be done during NaNo to help that cause. I think it’s now safe to say those plans have been shelved. In the time since I wrote that post, another project has crept to the Number One must-write spot, and it’s all the more likely that’s what I’ll be drafting in November. Which is all I will say about it now, because for all I know another pretty idea might come along between now and late at night on October 31st and I’ll change my mind yet again. Stay tuned....