Literary Agent Extraordinaire Nathan Bransford is blogging today about prologues, and as usual has some very good things to say. There’s a lot of debate out there (especially, may I say, in the fantasy writing world) about whether prologues are or aren’t necessary or cliched or any number of other things, but Nathan does a great job summing things up and letting us know what to do about submitting prologues with partial requests.

So here you go, starting with my favorite quote:

What is a prologue? Typically it is 3-5 pages of introductory material that is written while the author is procrastinating from writing a more difficult section of the book.

I’m alive. I did drop off the face of the earth for a while, or at least the blog. I have found several great YouTube videos and read several books this week, but nothing of great consequence has happened.

I wrote some more new material for the manuscript, but not as much as I had hoped. Several people who read the full thesis version said they really liked it. One said, and I quote, “It was awesome.” That made me smile, especially since the person in question is an avid fantasy reader.

I am in the midst of watching the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice for the second time in four days. I don’t feel like I’ve gotten a ton done lately, but I suppose it’s been enough to get by.

I did spend a considerable amount of time designing a gryphon for my world–I quite like it, and I think other people will too.

I apologize for the disjointed rambling and also for having begun 75% of this post’s sentences and 100% of its paragraphs with “I”. Please forgive me.

I don’t have a lot to say, except that it’s good to be home and I’ve got quite a bit of catching up to do now that I’m back. I intend to accomplish a good deal of that here with my laptop (retrieved from the Apple folks once again and, thus far, fully functional) on the couch watching movies with Matt.

We’re having corned beef and cabbage for dinner, only four days after St. Patrick’s Day, but I was gone then.

Oh, and this is funny:

Well we’re here, and we’ve been here for a few days. We’re trying to balalnce between being tourists and being people relaxing in a great rental condo. Mom brought her sewing machine, and I brought all that fabric I bought last week (well, most of it) and I’ve been working on the quilt top while she puts together photo albums from our childhood. I think she’s caught up to about 15 years ago now. Still a little ways to go, but it’s been fun to look through old photos as she puts the pages together. Man, I had some really appalling fashion tastes.

We’ve explored the area we’re staying in (near Opryland, for any who are familiar with Nashville) and avoided real super-touristy things over the weekend. This morning we visited The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s plantation, and had a very nice time all together. I don’t know that I would have chosen there to live, personally, but it’s very nice, all things considered. Remarkable that six of the rooms have original wallpaper – 170 years old now – and the house has been a museum for over 120 years. It’s rather rare to see things like that here in the States.

Tomorrow we’ve got tickets to the Grand Ole Opry show, which we’re properly excited about. Later this week we’re also going to take ourselves on a tour around downtown, visit the reproduction of the Parthenon, and take ourselves down to the Belle Meade Plantation where several of America’s premiere Thoroughbred lines began. Those are the high points, but we’ll probably fit in a few other things here and there.

If you want to tune in with us at the Opry show, it’ll be broadcast on 650 AM WSM Nashville — also streaming live at their website at 7:00 pm central time. Tuesday night.

That’s about all. Matt tells me he’s been feeding the dog and he sent me photos of the pot rack he built and installed to hang out pots and pans in the kitchen, which are the two things I assigned to him before I left. It seems all is well.

Woohoo Nashville!!

The Apple Store guy called this morning, and I’ve officially decided not to ream them out about the problem because, as some of you know, I talk a great game when I’m annoyed about something but when it really comes down to it I’m far too laid-back to get really upset about much of anything. I mean, really, in the grand scheme of things, it’s okay for me to be without my laptop for a week. It’s better than being without food for a week or being in a car crash or any number of other things I would care about a great deal more. This is the problem with having a well-balanced perspective of the world and realizing your life is pretty darn good, even with its annoyances: you never quite get worked up enough to twist someone’s arm, even when they might deserve it.

Anyway, they’ll call me when it’s ready and I assume Matt will pick it up while I’m in Nashville. They’ll have to wait for the fan to come in, and all in all it’s just so much easier to leave it with them that I’m not going to worry about it.

I’ll be plenty entertained in the meanwhile.

I need to be intentional about packing my luggage tonight; I did put together a packing list yesterday (as opposed to opening my standard list, which is on my laptop, of course) and most of the laundry is done, so things are in fair shape.

It seems like I had something else to say, and it must have been at least moderately interesting, but I haven’t a clue what it is now.

Ah, well. Have a nice week while I’m gone.

You might remember my description of the alarming noise my MacBook was making last week, and how they said they fixed it but, in fact, did NOT.

Well, I caved and turned it back in to the repair folks, on the off chance that they can fix the whole thing by 8:45pm tomorrow, because otherwise I will have to refrain from using it in the airport or on the plane or any other place where people might be disturbed by the sound of a turbine engine preparing for takeoff. It is possible for me to survive for an entire week without the internet; it is even possible for me to survive without my laptop (though admittedly harder). But it is not preferable, given the state of my various projects and the fact that I assume I’ll be doing a fair amount of research online about the various nearby things to do in Nashville. Or maybe I’ll just take the AlphaSmart and let Mom be all retro with her printed tour books and maps on folding paper that are kept in the car. We shall see.

At any rate, I was rather thoroughly annoyed at the Mac repair schedule and myself (for not caving earlier, when it would have been less of a problem to get things fixed before I leave) and generally disgruntled at the whole situation, but fortune is on my side once again, because one of the things I’ll be doing in Nashville is making a quilt, which means I got to buy fabric. One forgets, when it’s been this long between buying project fabric, how very nice it is to go into a quilting shop and have all these beautiful, lovely choices, and be able to think of zillions of ways to put them all together into something fantastic. Some people, when they’re upset, go clothes shopping. Me? Books and fabric. Yes sirree. That’s all I need.

And this evening is now devoted to laundry; first, the new fabric I bought, and then the regular laundry so Matt doesn’t end up walking around in dirty clothes by the end of next week. I’ll also be ironing the new fabric, which means the dog will be in a state of anxious near-panic for the entire evening. She is NOT a fan of the ironing board, but we do not know why. So it goes.

If I get my laptop back tomorrow, I’ll blog from Nashville. If not, I’ll catch you all in a week.

Bob2’s soil was very dry this morning, and his little cactus-buds were looking particularly dehydrated. After consulting with Matt, I watered him thoroughly (I watered Bob2, not Matt, you silly people). He just kept soaking up water, so I kept pouring it in until he didn’t soak up any more. I didn’t leave any standing at his base, but I got about a cup and a quarter and his soil was 100% saturated. Now, according to Matt, I am not allowed to water him for a month. Matt has never killed a cactus, so I am inclined to take his advice.

Ironically, I realized on the drive to work today that although I remembered to water my cactus this morning, I forgot to water the dog. Er… to refill the dog’s water dish. You might think that’s horribly neglectful of me, but I’m not too worried. First of all, the toilet’s open if she gets really desperate (not that I hope she will take advantage of that option, but it’s there in an emergency, and she’s been known to do it before) and second of all, I seriously doubt it will get warm enough to dehydrate her any further today.

We have an informal temperature scale in our household, in which the person who takes the dog out in the morning gauges the weather for the benefit of the other person’s clothing and/or jacket choice for the day. The terms vary somewhat, but in general there’s super hot, hot, warm, no temperature (also called “perfect”), chilly, cold, and freakin’ freezing. It was freakin’ freezing this morning. Thus, little danger of overheated, dehydrated dog in the house today.

Furthermore, I purposefully did not fill the dog’s water dish before I fed her. This is because recently she has had the most amazingly foul breath. (No, seriously. Foul. FOUL.) It got bad enough that we went to the pet store for bad-dog-breath remedies and came back with some minty stuff that goes into her water dish and does seem to have worked, more or less. At any rate, Shiloh LOVES her new minty water, and she tends to drink rather a lot of it, especially right when we put down a new, full bowl. After three days of unfortunate experience, we ascertained that Shiloh drinking a lot of her minty water + a full belly of food = vomit on the carpet. Depending on whether the water was consumed before or after the food was added, the vomit is either plain liquid or sprinkled with entirely undigested bits of kibble. We may be headed into the realm of too much information here, so I’ll wrap up by saying that we’ve decided a fresh bowl of minty water at the same time as a bowl of food is a supremely bad idea. So I fed the dog this morning and intended to put the water down about a half hour later, after her belly had some time to settle with the food, and then we got into a rush to leave the house and I plum forgot. (Plumb? I don’t think I’ve ever typed that phrase before, so I never had to know how to spell it.)

So that’s how the cactus got watered and the dog didn’t.

Also worth noting this morning, my boss is in a musical mood. Between appointments he was rather lustily singing lyrics I’ve never heard to a rather well-known melody from The Pirates of Penzance, but of course I can’t remember the name or the correct lyrics for the life of me now. I don’t know if he made up the lyrics or if they’re simply a version I’ve never heard before, but they were highly enjoyable (about how some people think it best to be melancholy but he prefers cheerful melody or something like that). When he got tired of singing, I still caught bits and pieces of the melody as he whistled to himself.

Mornings like this remind me of how much I really do like my job.

I’m headed to Nashville in two days–if all works out, I’m going to take some fabric with me to make into a quilt top since Mom can bring a sewing machine. So this morning’s agenda is to finalize my math on how many fabrics I need and how much of them, and put together a list so I can go shopping this evening.

Aside from being crafty, Mom and I will be exploring the city in a leisurely fashion while we’re there. Neither of us have been before, so if you’ve got suggestions on fun things to do, leave me a comment!

Since I’m updating my website info lately, I thought it was about time I updated my blogroll, which now appropriately lists blogs I follow and frequently visit, both writing-related and otherwise. I intend to put together a links page soon, which will include links to websites (not blogs) that I use often and/or whose writing I enjoy.

Poke around and enjoy, if you are so inclined.

1) The design I settled on had some very strange issues that I don’t have time to figure out how to fix right now, so we are settling for Choice #2. Yay birdie!

2) I don’t want to go to bible study tonight, but I’m going because my group is in charge of coffee snacks and I missed last week and I do like going, even if I feel like a slacker because I haven’t done my questions ahead of time for the second week in a row.

3) Most important: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MATT! Not that he much cares if I tell you all it’s his birthday, but I wanted to do it anyway. We went out for lunch and then went shopping (we tried to buy fun stuff, honest, but we ended up with socks, drain cleaner, and dishwasher detergent–we are definitely the life of any party). But really, back to the point: Happy Birthday. :) I will refrain from further mushy-ness now.

Well I figured out how to pass the time this afternoon… and as a result, I’ve found a new layout design for the blog. Feel free to poke around and let me know what works and doesn’t work, and I’ll see if I have even the smallest chance of fixing things up a bit. We’ll see how it goes.