I finished reading The Hungry Ocean, by Linda Greenlaw, last night, and have started reading The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova, which is about Dracula. I'm only four or five chapters in, and already I'm dreaming about vampires.

(I never dream about romance novels, but I dream about vampires and mermaids, so maybe this whole romance novel idea is stupid and I should write the things in my dreams?)

Of course, the dream and book have reminded me about Fred Saberhagen's Dracula series (which includes An Old Friend of the Family and The Dracula Tapes, among others. These aren't great books, though they are entertaining mind-candy reads, but they do point out exactly why Dracula could NOT be dead at the end of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

The first time I read his reasoning, I went back to the original text, of course, and checked the “death scene.”

If you read it carefully, it becomes obvious:
Saberhagen was right.

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Linda Greenlaw

Made famous by Sebastian Junger's book The Perfect Storm, and the movie that followed, Linda Greenlaw was the captain of the Hannah Boden, a swordboat out of Gloucester, MA. In this book, her first, though I read her others long ago, and only just finished this one, she tells the story of a typical month aboard her ship, and explains how swordfishing really works.

As much a story of the sea, as it is a story about the people who work as commercial fishermen, this book is vivid and engaging, with equal amounts of action and humor, the latter most often represented by Greenlaw's own dry wit. At times, I could feel the waves, and smell the salt air, so good was she and drawing her readers in.

I'm looking forward to re-reading her other work, just for more of her voice, and the flavor of her life, and I hope she continues to write.

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I've had a nasty flu that has lingered for days – yesterday morning I described myself as feeling like acid was being poured down my ear canals, and that my hair hurt – I've spent much of the week so far in healing sleep, with the exception of an interview at a BigMortgageCompany in Plano on Tuesday, for a position doing help-desk support stuff for their loan officers. I felt that my interview was weak – also, the interviewer had a really limp handshake – has no one ever told him that your handshake speaks volumes – and I walked away thinking that a) I wouldn't get an offer, and b) that the room we walked through, the actual call floor, seemed to suck the energy out of everyone on it.

As it turns out, I arrived back home at 4:45, had a call at 5:15 offering me the job, and I told them honestly that I have another interview for a different division of BigMortgageCompany on Friday, which is for a processing position, and not an hour away from home on a good day. I had reminded them that they knew about this going in, and that I needed to go through that process before I could decide.

Despite this, they called me before eight AM Wednesday, and pushed me to make a decision. I have no patience for people who push others to make choices without all the information, but, as I said, I already didn't like the job, the location, etc. So I spoke to Fuzzy, who said, “Lovey, I'm not worried about us not having money to live, I'm worried about us not having money to do everything you want to do.” (Can you see why I love this man to death?)

And then I turned it down, both via extremely polite voicemail, and via email, asking them not to contact me again. (They called again anyway, which pissed me off.)

As if it was a sign, I received a loan app in the mail yesterday, from the OldCompany that I freelance for, and then, we have our first Mexico loan, which we're not even approved to DO yet, coming today or tomorrow.

But I'm still going to the BigMortgageCompany interview on Friday.

And right now, still feeling horrid, though less so, I'm going back to bed for a bit, with a mug of hot tea and Linda Greenlaw's The Hungry Ocean for company.

Haven't touched my NaNovel since Day 1….am not liking the plot, or rather, the voice….but I think it's an “I have no energy thing” really, not the plot itself. Enh. I'll catch up when I'm ready.

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Judith Ryan Hendricks

Hendricks' second book is a departure from the cozy Seattle she wrote about in Bread Alone, and returned to in The Baker's Apprentice. This time, the setting is New Mexico, primarily in and around Santa Fe, and instead of bread, the main themes are art, herbs, and family.

Avery James, raised in an orphanage with only an embroidered t-shirt as a memento of the family she never knew, comes face to face with a painting of her mother while working as a caterer for a prominent artist. He befriends her, and offers to tell her about her mother, who died several years before, and she grudgingly accepts the offer. Swirling around the pair are rumors, old lovers, and a collection of old Mexican women who took Avery off the streets, and gave her a home, and their knowledge of herbs.

Like Bread Alone, Isabel's Daughter paints vivid pictures of both people and food, but unlike Hendrick's first book, this one's ending is somewhat more bitter than sweet.

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Last night: 75 people, some who knew each other already, the rest, friends who simply hadn't met yet, gathered at a restaurant to celebrate the beginning of NaNoWriMo, which starts for me in about 63 minutes.

Tonight: $75 worth of chocolate has been distributed to local kids in various scary and comical states of dress. My favorites: The rapping inflatable baby, and the young Raggedy Ann experiencing the end of her first trick-or-treat, borne aloft in her father's arms. The latter actually caused me to utter the word “precious” aloud, and in front of witnesses.

Tomorrow: A trip to Plano (there's a 75 reference there, really) for a 2nd interview for a job that, if offered, and accepted, would mesh my mortgage skills and my (somewhat rusty) computer support skills. The money's good though.

Right now? A 75% chance that I'll be asleep at midnight, and not actually writing.

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Fuzzy and I have just purchased tickets for the 9:45 PM showing of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at the Cinemark IMAX theatre in Dallas, on Friday the 18th. (The 12:01 AM show is sold out.)

Wanna join us? Here's the link: CineMark IMAX Theater.

When my mother and I opened our first mortgage company together, before I'd ever heard of MUSHing, or met Fuzzy, or even owned my OWN computer, we were a net branch of a major wholesale lender with headquarters in Citrus Heights, which meant we had to go there every few months for training on new products, or seminars on things like “How to Underwrite Self-Employed Borrowers” or “Understanding VA Loans” (the latter was an all day seminar, which might have been fine for the people that still needed calculators to figure out income, but drove me nuts).

To make the trips less horrific, we developed the habit of staying in frou-frou hotels, picking interesting restaurants, and, every morning on the way to the main offices, or out of town, we'd stop at this great little independent espresso shop for triple mochas and morning glory muffins, which don't actually have morning glory IN them (you can't eat morning glories, after all). Instead, they're pumpkin muffins with raisins and nuts, and sometimes they come with a sugar glaze, and sometimes they don't.

Tonight, because I wanted to bake something kind of autumnal, and because there's been this can of pumpkin calling to me from the depths of the pantry for several weeks now, I found a pumpkin bread recipe, tweaked it by using whole wheat flour instead of white, and mixing brown and granulated sugars, and adding walnuts and raisins in place of pecans. It's cooling now, and the whole house smells of nutmeg, cinnamon, and spicey secrets. I haven't yet decided if I'll be glazing the loaves or not – I like it both ways, and as it's a breakfast bread, it doesn't need to be horribly sweet – but I'm eager for morning, when I'll get to slice the end, toast it, slather it in butter, and nibble on it while I sip my morning chai.

In honor of those muffins I used to eat in Citrus Heights, I've named this Morning Glory Bread (it's important to continue the tradition of naming the bread after an unrelated substance, and anyway, morning glories are a favorite flower in my family.) I'd invite you all to come to breakfast and try it, but my house isn't quite that large, however, I'm happy to provide the recipe for the bread – both the original version, and my own.

In other news, my interview from Wednesday the 26th has earned me a 2nd interview with the actual company, a week from Friday (after month-end reporting). I'm crediting the bread with this glorious news :)

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1. Have felt vaguely tired all day, and alternately too hot and too cold.
2. Have another job interview tomorrow.
3. Posted another installment in my Snape/OFC series to MoonChilde, and fanfiction.net, though the latter won't actually show it til some time tomorrow.
4. Have the outline for my NaNoWriMo project in my head and am translating it to paper. The working title is What's the Interest Rate for Love?. Yes, please mock.
5. Smallville rocked tonight. Nothing is funnier than James Marsters saying, “There's no such thing as vampires.”
6. Tired. Bed now.

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I looked at the calendar in my sidebar just a moment ago and realized it's been three days since I last posted, and that surprised me, a little, because usually I'm extremely aware of when and how often I post.

(Actually, I posted to the book blog, so LiveJournal and OD readers saw a post more recent than three days ago, but direct readers did not.)

* * * * *

It's not that I haven't got stuff to say, because I do. I'm enjoying watching fall get settled in, loving the warm days, the cool nights, the end of air conditioning, but I'm in a writing mode more than a blogging mode – have been outlining for NaNoWriMo, and dabbling in TNG and HP fanfic just to stretch my dialogue muscles. It's weird. When I'm comfortable around people I can babble incessantly with them, and I'm always making mental soundbites of snippets I hear on the street, when there's a neat turn of phrase or an interesting accent or cadence, but despite that, I really don't like writing dialogue…which is a big dilemma when one is concentrating on fiction.

* * * * *

After nearly being decapitated by a seatbelt yesterday while we were entering the Dallas Tollway, I've decided that my next CarSeek piece will be on seatbelts and child seats and things like that. I mean, we all know about putting small kids in the back seat, but there's far more to it than that.

* * * * *

The neighborhood dogs have moved beyond mere barking to barking and howling. Mournful howling that happens all through the night (though, in fits, not constantly), and makes my own dogs restless. If nothing else, it's shown me that Cleo is not as barky as the majority of the other dogs around here. In fact, she's been pretty quiet lately, but I think that may be the turn of seasons – she seems to have a cold.

* * * * *

I've been doing a lot of personal evaluation as well, trying to decide if I really want to return to that whole 8-5, working for other people thing. It's tough. More money is good. But despite the current tightness of our budget, I love my life, I'm just not using my time to full advantage, and there's a project in the works that could be potentially lucrative, but will take a month or two to kick in. Decisions, decisions.

* * * * *

Fuzzy's working from home today, as he has two conference calls and a doctor's appt, and I feel like my activity is being curtailed because of it, I need music and sound to keep me going when I'm in moods like this, and yet, I don't want to disturb him too much.

Soundproofing. We must look into it.

And on that note, I shall click “publish” and go make some oatmeal. I love oatmeal.

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Judith Ryan Hendricks

I was first introduced to Ms. Hendricks' work through the novel Bread Alone, which I mostly read in a single night in a hotel in L.A. that had an extremely uncomfortable mattress. That book was warm and funny, and when I finished it, I was inspired to bake bread for the first time in years, so when I discovered that a sequel was published this year, I immediately added it to my amazon wishlist, and then ordered it when I spent the birthday gift certificates I'd amassed.

I regret to confess – I'm disapponted in the sequel. The Baker's Apprentice lives up to all those negative stereotypes of second novels, and while the old familiar characters – Wynter who fled her cheating husband in L.A. and moved to Seattle to bake bread, her friend and sometime roomate, the dancer CM, young blue-haired art school dropout and cake decorator, Tyler, andMac the bartender/novelist who wins Wynter's heart – are all there, they seem pale shadows of their earlier selves, and instead of coming away from this book feeling cozy and wanting to sip coffee and smell bread baking, I feel cold and sort of hollow and unsatisfied.

If Bread Alone was a perfectly flakey croissant with sweet cream butter and bitter dark marmalade, The Baker's Apprentice is Wonder bread – bland, spongey, and utterly lacking in color.

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