A Fishy Story and/or My Secret Inner Life.

This entry isn't about Barbie, and it's not about writing--exactly. What it's really about is drawing inspiration from tidbits of other people's lives, and allowing our imaginations to revise our personal realities.

You see, I am a mermaid. Ah, but to say so now is to buy the fish before the aquarium, so indulge me while I digress. Yes, I know. Again.

I came from a family steeped--no, if the truth be told, they were more like marinated--in hard, cold reality. SO much so that I grew up utterly convinced that I was an adopted child. I squandered quite a few Saturday nights searching the house for evidence that would prove me an abandoned or orphaned Hawaiian mermaid princess.

As I'm sure you've gleaned by now, hard, cold reality bores the ever-lovin' hell out of me.

My father, brilliant man that he was and is, has never held much of an appreciation for my infatuation with the stuff of myths and legend. While he's by far the most well-read man I've ever known, my father is not given to flights of fancy. He is a pure scientist--he relies on the five senses to provide him with the information by which he, in turn, forms his practical reality.

Being the imaginative bairn that I was, I'm sure you can imagine some of the arguments my father and I engaged in as I grew up. You see, by some comic turn of fate, I was the sort of child who dwelled within. I believed in everything my father insisted could not enter the realm of possibility--Santa, faeries, ghosts, selkies, unicorn. Compassionate politics. World peace. Oh, and merpeople.

In spite of the fact that my father used science to convince me of the error of my multiple delusions, I've always remained convinced that I am a mermaid. My fascination with merpeople has followed me into adulthood, and the picture that accompanies this post is of the last mermaid that followed me home from a day trip to Captiva (Heaven on earth if you've never been there....for both human women and mer-types.) To me, mermaids are real. I cannot, will not contemplate a world without them. End of story, don't mess with me on this. Got it?

You'd think that as an adult woman with four children, I would have found cause to doubt my conviction of my semi-piscean state. Certainly none of my offspring came with fins. Could it be that my father was right?

I might have begun to wonder--just a bit. Until today. You see, I ran across a bone fide merman sighting. Not an ancient one, mind you. Rather a recent one. Which means that I am, at the very least, not alone in my convictions that merpeople live and breathe (respirate?).

Fishermen have claimed that they've spotted an amphibious creature resembling a human in the Caspian sea. Gafar Gasanof, the captain of the Baku, an Azeri trawler, told an Iranian newspaper: "The creature was swimming a parallel course near the boat for a long time.

He went on to report, "at the beginning we thought it was a big fish, but then we spotted hair on the head of the monster and his fins looked pretty strange, the front part of his body was equipped with arms."

According to Mr. Gasanot, this 'man of the sea' has been spotted with increasing regularity since off-shore oil production began in the Caspian. Other eyewitness say the marine humanoid is about 5ft 6ins, of strong build with a protruding stomach, webbed hands and black-green hair. His lower lip is said to join smoothly to his neck above the gills.

OK, so he's not exactly the hunkalicious merman I envisioned, but he's a merman nonetheless. And you know, he *could* be a long lost relative of mine. Maybe he's green because he's seasick, homesick, or just plain heart sick from missing his long lost mermaid princess daughter....moi!

As you can see just reading this little tidbit has my muse working overtime. And I'm sure my Daddy is sitting out there somewhere, wondering how on earth any daughter of his (even adopted) could possibly believe such a thing possible.

The point? Allow your world to enchant you and magic will find you.

*Sigh*. So many stories. So little time.

May love always rule in your life.

Liane (who still believes in Santa)

My Amazon Short is Live!

Eeek, my Amazon short, Imprint in the Ice is out. I can't believe I'm this excited over such a teensy publishing credit. But I am. And I got my first blurb, too. :)

According to William Stillman, author of Autism and the God Connection, "The poignant prose with which Liane Gentry Skye crafts her uncommon love story makes Imprint in the Ice a vignette about not only the universality of love but the inextinguishable bonds we forge with one another no matter the variation of our human experience."

Now that's a mighty big blurb to live up to, but since my story centers around the love of an autistic man for a developmentally challenged woman--William's endorsement means a lot.

I hope you enjoy the story.

As always, allow love to rule in your lives.

Liane

A Fact Checking Morality Tale....

I think this is one of those posts that requires a disclaimer before I eat up any of your day.

I'm about to embark on one of those "OMG, Liane is such a whack-job" stories that won't make a bit of sense unless you're a writer trying to sell a book manuscript. So if you aren't, and that kind of thing doesn't hit it for you, feel free to move on.

No, really. I won't hold it against you.

Nor is this post going to do much to reassure my regs that I have recovered from Weird Al day. And for those of you who still hold Weird Al Day against me, read on, because when I hang this post, I'm pretty sure good old Al will fade back into cyber-oblivion, where I'm fairly sure most feel he belongs. (:::wistful sigh:::)

I queried my number one most favorite literary agency in the world late last week. For those of you who don't know, a query is an author's sales pitch for an unpublished book. The goal of the query is to get an agent or editor to say--girlfriend, if you don't get that book in my inbox pronto, I'm going to hunt you down and pilfer your hard drive until I find the goods myself.

Now before you get your thong in a twist, I'm not saying TKA is my favorite literary agency because I'm fond of brown noses. :).

The Knight Agency is my favorite agency in the sense that I'd so party with the gals at TKA even if they snapped my pencils in half, stole my paper and urged me to run, not walk, to 101 reasons to stop writing.

TKA places some really good books--the kinds of books I like to both read and write. They also go the extra mile and work hard to soften the face of the writing community. If that's not enough to give you the warm fuzzies, try this--they also make the world a better place while they're doing it by raising funds for breast cancer research.

So what's not to love, right?

So, anyhow, there was a point, and I must find my way back to it. Which was.....uh......er.....:::reads backwards::::

Oh,right. My query.

Since TKA represents some young adult (YA) titles I have enjoyed--and one of the books on their list actually *inspired* It's (so not) A Barbie World--it only felt natural to give them a shout and ask them if they'd like to read my brand new dream child.

Let me tell you now, a writer never worked so hard honing her pitch. That one page letter took me longer to cook up than five chapters of the original manuscript. And in the end, I think I wrote a totally killin' query.

At least I thought so until 4:23 a.m, this morning. That's when the hot flashes/OCD/Panic Attack that are the hallmarks of Post Query Stress Disorder set in. I sat bolt upright in bed, shivering against a cold sweat, worrying about something I'd said in my query.

You see, I cited one of my YA writer heroes who wrote a fun, fresh, high-concept title called "I was a Teenage Popsicle". I read about it first on TKA's blog.

But at 4:23 this morning, as I fanned away my hot flash, it dawned on me that I wasn't quite exactly for sure POSITIVE that the agency actually *placed* the book. I just remembered reading about the book's release on the TKA blog.

Can you say heart thumping agony? So here I am, up in the wee hours, cussing like wild woman. Sweat is dripping onto my keyboard as I pound my way across the net to Publisher's Marketplace to find out what agent actually PLACED I was a Teenage Popsicle.

And it wasn't TKA.

THUD.

Now in my defense, in checking the agency website, I found that Bev Katz Rosenbaum truly is their client.

So....I'm thinking she may have switched agents.

Now I'm praying when TKA opens my query and see's me so confidently comparing my work to "I was a Teenage Popsicle", which I in turn attribute to TKA. they don't automatically say.....good grief, what a whack job.... "Here's another one for the 86 file..."

But if they do?

Well, if I get an automatic rejection....then dammit, I deserve it. Because in my eagerness to hit the "send" key, I didn't thoroughly check the facts. And I know better than that.

And I'd still love me some TKA.

Moral of story? My high school band director was absolutely right when he said.......Let me tell you something about the word ASS-U-ME....

:::sigh:::

This too shall pass.

So many books to write, so little time to sell them....

It Ain't Easy Being Green!

She looks a bit green around the gills (vbg), but here's a Barbie even I can love! :)

The Post Where Liane Attempts to Reactivate her Gray Matter

I decided to take a break from my head-banging query writing attempts today to attempt a somewhat rational post.

OK, stop laughing. I know the Weird Al video was a bit off the wall, even for moi. :)

So, here goes. My redemption post.

A few months ago my tweenish daughter lamented the fact that when Barbie dumped Ken, she did nothing better with her freedom than burn her stellar resume and set about getting in touch with her inner slut.

Apparently, my daughter's anti-Barbie backlash isn't so unusual among girls her age.

Could it be that the pink tide that's swept across our world is beginning to turn, or--dare I say it--even ebb? A blog reader submitted to me today evidence that its becoming "so not" a Barbie World in Japan. Recently, Japan's answer to Barbie, Licca-chan, re-invented herself from material girl to eco-friendly environmentalist.

I only one have problem with Licca-chan's redo of her previous self. She appears, on the outside, every bit as pink-obsessed as Barbie, her American counterpart. But, to give the plastic princess credit where its due, she's at least trying to add a bit of more depth to her plastic is fantastic personna.

According to AP wire reports, Licca-chan recently used her own (pink, gak) *cloth* shopping bag instead of the standard plastic basket to shop at one of Japan's Licca-chan Eco-Friendly Doll House shows. In doing so, Licca-chan's makers hope to impart the message that the popular fashionista is doing her part to advance the Japanese government's campaign against global warming.

The eco-friendly fashion doll will be further utilized by the Japanese government to launch a nationwide campaign which supports environmentally friendly lifestyles.

Next thing you know, cloth shopping bags could debut on runways everywhere as the new *must have* handbag.

Or not.

End of rational post.

Let the utter post-Nanowrimo mayhem resume.

This is Liane's Brain on Plastic

I swear, this is not National Post Inane Crap Week.

Honest.

You see, in order for me to render my Nanowrimo book into a readable state (damn, did it ever need help), I had to breathe life into the Barbie character. During the ensuing struggle to write "believably blonde" it has become quite necessary for me to channel Malibu Barbie.

Be happy that I at least spared you another "Weird Al" clip. :)



How evil are you?

Bittersweet Serenade