The Cinnamon Invasion: Week 2

Day 8
Well, Cinnamon is back this morning. And it seems he's made a new friend. And I'm going to have to burn my favorite sweatshirt now.

Day 9
I've reached the point where now it's more about what curiosities I'll discover in the morning instead of if there will be any. Cinnamon greets me inside the front door, all cheery and smiling. "Happy St. Nicholas Day!" he yells, with his usual high-pitched dentist drill of a voice.

"St. Nicholas Day?" I ask, rubbing the sleep out of my face.

"Yeah, you know, treats in the shoes, that whole thing! December 6th! That's today!"

His description triggers a vague childhood memory. "So you're saying St. Nicholas came here last night?"

He laughs indulgently. "Of course not. He tried, but I kept the place locked down -- sanctuary and all, you know. It wouldn't be safe to let just anyone in here. I took care of business myself instead."

I see my shoes beside the front door. "Pizza?" I ask. "That's my treat?"

"You like pizza, right? Everyone does!"

I lean in for a closer look at the other shoe. "And...a vitamin?"

"Yeah!" he says, enthusiastically. "Because, health!"

I walk away, shaking my head and mentally adding shoe-shopping to my To Do List for the day.

Day 10
I managed to get the Christmas tree up today. Cinnamon's reaction was not at all what I expected. "It's happening too soon," I overheard him say, as if thinking aloud. "I'm not ready yet." I thought, "HA! Join the club, you little monster. Nobody's ready for Christmas yet. I haven't even started shopping."

By the time darkness settled in, he had checked the lock on each door at least twice, then began standing vigil at the patio door. "It's only a matter of time until they find me," he whispered, seemingly oblivious that I was even in the room.... 

Day 11
It seems Movie Night was going on while I was sleeping. I was much more comfortable with the idea of Cinnamon being potentially influenced by holiday cartoons from the 1960s.

For some reason this reminded me of my first fight with Tyler.... 

Day 12
I found Cinnamon staring at the wall. Before I could even ask, he said, "I just wanted to watch something burn."

Day 13
I found Cinnamon in the kitchen when I got home. "I wrote you a poem today," he said. "I hope you like it."

I'm sleeping with the bedroom door locked tonight.

Day 14
I came home to the sound of maniacal laughter echoing from the office. Cinnamon was sitting beside my desktop, looking a little too self-satisfied.

"What did you do?" I asked, my mind scrolling through too many bad possibilities.

He laughed some more, then suddenly went stoic. "I learned today that you've been posting pictures of me all over the Internet. Since I have made my needs for sanctuary abundantly clear, I was greatly displeased by this and decided you needed to be taught a lesson. Therefore, certain contacts found in your address book have experienced, shall we say, 'slight technical difficulties' today."

"Okay, whatever, enough with the vague sanctuary talk," I replied. "Just cut to the chase. Why do you need sanctuary? Who or what are you hiding from?"

He sighed. "If I tell you, you won't ever be able to go back to a time when you didn't know. And you might end up regretting that."

I left the room, refusing to take the bait. I can only hope this nonsense will resolve itself by Christmas.

Will the madness ever end??? Tune in next week! Same elf-time, same elf-blog....

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!