To more fully answer Elizabeth's question:

I shall build this.

And these shall serve me.

(can you guess their names?)

I need you all to...

Do me a favor. Everybody take a moment to go over to this guy's blog, and tell him, "Thanks for keeping Ray's mother's blood warm and stuff." His name is Chad. He's a perfusionist I work with. He ran the heart/lung bypass machine for my mother's surgery, and he's always joking about how his blog gets no traffic. So go and surprise him. Cuz it would be funny.

The only other reason I'm posting today: I've been thinking about my future. Daydreaming really, about what it's all gonna be like, you know? And in the midst of my nostalgia, I cannot help but wonder -- do you think Honda will let me dress Asimo in armor?*

*to staff my future castle

How I spent my day

So here' this funny little thing... Blog Friends, meet Porcine Heart Valve... Porcine Heart Valve meet Blog Friends.

Now Blog Friends, I know that you're all decent and reasonable folk, and you would never judge someone based on appearance alone, but having said that, I realize that Mr. Heart Valve here isn't much of a looker. In fact, he sort of resembles a crude football tee wearing a dress made out of a tube sock.

Nossir... looks are not the issue at hand.

To be honest, I have, orchestrated this entire situation (the seemingly random and unexpected, i.e. 'chance', meeting) for the sole purpose of spending as much time, and using as many words, as is humanly possible, to simply say this: my mother had open-heart surgery today. And now. I languish in the waiting room while she sleeps. And I am bored. So I am typing these excessive strings of bull-pucky to amuse myself.

Whoops. Should probably mention that everything went very very smooth with the surgery. My mom's doing super. In fact, last time I was in her room, she was expressing her displeasure at sporting a breathing tube by attempting to gouge passing nurses with her toe-nails. Fortunately casualties were minimal.

For those of you who don't know, my mother is Veeflower, the woman who likes to get into my comment section and spread lies about me being some sort of saint, and thereby ruining my street cred. Another thing you may not realize is that potential purchasers of robot servants are charged according to a sliding scale. And yup, you guessed it - it's all based on street cred. So because this woman persists in saying such nice things about me all the time, I will soon be paying top dollar to staff my writer's fortress. I'll have barely enough treasure leftover to purchase the necessary stores of Guinness.

And what kind of fool builds a castle without a Guinness cellar?

One last thing: Thanks to Ms Carrie Harris, I found myself, at long last, sucked into the whole Facebook phenomena. I spent a good part of my down time here in the waiting room fiddling with the thing, seeking out new worlds and new life forms. So if you're a Facebook participant, and I haven't yet discovered you, leave your ID in the comments and I'll make you my friend. Unless you don't want to be. In which case, you might express that instead, preferably with insults and obsceneties -- so that I know how you really feel about me.

Blog re-calibration

This is beside the point, but all you would-be YA writers should read this article: "read this b4 u publish"

So I went and acted all lazy yesterday, and now I'm back. I got up early, and did something I've been meaning to do for a long time - EXECUTE MY BLOGROLL.

In all actuality, I think it was Blogger's new 'Blogroll II' feature that put them out of business, but whatever the reason, Blogroll hasn't been running for well over a month. And so. It has now lost it's place of honor in the temple of Ray. I spent 'many-long-time' typing all my links, and I've even added a whole crazy slew of new ones. So go ahead - look for your name. Basically if you've ever commented on my blog, ever, you're now an official 'Friend of V'. Good for you. Now go and tell people you know me. Cuz they'll be really impressed.

Or not.

Anyhow. Now that I know who's been blogging, and who's been hiding out in secluded cabins working on their revisions, I can get caught up. With all y'all.

For those folks who're owed some literary closure (from the 'Fiersom's Brood' fiasco), go ahead and wire me an email. As always, my addy's beside my profile pic. In return, you'll get a lovely attatchment containing the whole, 'fresh-out-of-the-oven', twenty-plus page document. I came very very close to uploaded it to Writer's Cafe and including a link in this blog post, BUT... then I became frightened.

Cuz this is stuff that somebody's about to try to sell. In other words, this book has become a marketable product.

Scary, no?

And so it is done.

So I've spent the last few days in this lovely little vacation house here, putting the finishing touches on the latest revision of good old 'Fiersom's Brood. Thanks Wendy. Sorry about the beer stains and the broken window.

Anyway, now I'm feeling kind of 'writed out'.

Over the past two weeks, I've ripped my entire manuscript to tattered little shreds, stitched them all back together, then smoothed out all the wrinkles, then smoothed out some more wrinkles, then smoothed out some more wrinkles. Hopefully there aren't too many wrinkles left. Have I mentioned that revision is my least favorite part of the writing process?

Yup. I feel like a wrung out sponge. And now all I want to do is lay beside the sink for a couple of days, and let all the scummy dishwater evaporate from my body.

But I do have a treat for those of you who've read the book. Remember how I ended it with the phrase, 'Which is so rude'? It was kind of my own little joke. I thought it was funny that the main character ended the book complaining about the fact that the antogonist didn't explain very much, when I, the writer, deliberately left a lot unexplained. Get it? 'Which is so rude.' It was meant to be funny, but it ended up alienating a few people, including my agent.

So now, I have a real ending. With a denoument and everything. And I think it's pretty good. I'll share it with those of you who've read the book, so that you can get the 'emotional payout' that the book was apparently lacking.

But it'll have to wait a few days.

In the meantime: sponge, sink, dishwater -- I'm gonna take it easy for a bit.

revisions

This'll probably be my only update for the week - heck, maybe for the next two weeks.

Ever have one of those bad dreams where you've got something important you desperately need to do, but you just can't start it? Or you can't get to it because your body weighs a million pounds and your shoelaces are tied together? There's so much nervous anxiety, you feel like your heart is gonna hack its way out of your rib cage and run screaming into the night.

That's my life right now.

In the middle of last week, I told my agent that I could be done with this next round of revisions in two weeks. And I totally could have. But then all this stuff started happening: sick kids home from school, Dr's appointments, unexpected car repairs, unexpected house guests, and of course, the most important person in my life had to go and have a birthday in there too.

So I'm way behind.

And I'm a little stressed.

Before I disappear, though, I have to brag on my little man, Chantze. He's been saving his hard-earned money for about two months now to buy a Playstation Portable (he saved up for his own PS2 when he was eight). He's been babysitting, doing housework and yard work, plus odd jobs for his grandpa and uncle. So this last weekend, for his mother's birthday, Chantze went and spent nearly all of his money to buy her a nice purse, a necklace, and a bracelet. Sweet, no?

That meant more to her than anything I could have bought her, and I'm proud as heck.