Lights Out

I’m sitting here typing early on a Saturday morning, and by early I mean Oh-dark-thirty. I’d intended to write this yesterday, and in fact was sitting here staring at the blank screen trying to dredge up the brilliant idea I’d come up with in the middle of the day while I was at work (why didn’t you write it down? I can’t make notes at work, and besides, my hands were full) when the lights went out.

Sometimes you have to take things as a sign. I took that one as a chance to sit down and finish my paper book (as opposed to the ones I’ve been reading in ebook on my tablet and phone. Now, I could very well have written this post on my phone – I’ve done that before – except that I’d allowed my son to play a game on it and it was nearly out of battery. I posted on facebook to make sure friends I’d been chatting with knew why I’d disappeared, and I shut it down.

It was very, very nice to just sit and read. I couldn’t do anything I’d planned to do that evening, as there wasn’t enough light to make dragons, I didn’t want to make frosting without my stand mixer (I can, but I’d mopped both labs, among other things, and my shoulders were telling me OH H*!! NO! at the idea of creating stiff decorating frosting), and I couldn’t write this post. I have to admit the feeling of freedom and relaxation was a bit giddy.

When I was a girl, one of my mother’s favorite books was Swiss Family Robinson. We read it aloud as a family (more than once) and I grew up wishing that there was a deserted island somewhere I could go live. I still think that from time to time. No work, no worries, no demands, no people…

Last night wasn’t quite like that. I do have kids, and a husband. The kids were discussing how long they could make their electronics batteries last, and lamenting they had not the forethought to charge battery packs. I just picked up my paper book, got under the window over my bed, and read until the light was too low to see well. We have candles, and oil lamps, but there was no need to break them out. When I’d read it dark, about eight in the evening, I curled up and went to sleep.

After a week of fighting exhaustion and feeling fatigue constantly, it was rather nice to wake up with a bright mind and cheerful constitution. I highly recommend it.

What has this to do with writing? Very little, other than the idea that if you don’t take care of the writer, no writing will be done. That, and sometimes stepping away from the screen entirely is refreshing. Nothing new or ground-breaking here. Just the musings of a morning after a sound night’s sleep.

As I get older, and boy, do I feel older recently, I’ve been musing more and more on the passage of time, and how to get everything done I want to get done. Sometimes I think I need to step back, and try to get nothing done for a little while.

Jade Star, the prequel to Tanager’s Fledglings, will be going on sale this weekend. If you liked Tanager, you might also enjoy Jade, although you don’t have to read one to get the other.

 

Jade is determined to die. She is old, and useless, when she points her tiny subspace craft at the cold stars. She wakes up in the care of others who refuse to grant her death, and instead give her a new mission in life.

Jade isn’t happy, and she only gets angrier when she learns that her mysterious new home hides a horrible secret. It’s time for this old lady to kick butt and take names. Aliens, death, destruction… nothing trumps the fierce old woman who is protecting her family.