It was bright in the living room this morning when I woke from dreams of standing on the Marin headlands, gazing over the Golden Gate as the woolen fog coating the Pacific peeled back and revealed the sun, golden and perfuse, as only it can be in California. 

I suppose the eastern dawn had come gradually, but I wasn’t aware enough to appreciate its approach. I slipped in and out of California dreams during those hours of the morning between the instant awareness and narcolepsy that comes from having a sleeping newborn stir and soothe while cuddled to your chest. The sunlight through the blinds seemed green and pale, as though the impermeable cloud of spring pollen had made its way into our home and coated even my eyelids with fertile particulate matter. It occurred to me that in a few short weeks, we’d be free of pollen and humidity. But we’d also be leaving behind the distinct lushness of the approaching Spring. Arid climates cannot replicate the feeling of anticipation just before the whole world erupts into moist, honey-scented bloom.

When I was young, I used to imagine the world turned black and white when the sun went down. That the colors of the world leeched down into the soil and out the other side of the earth to where the sun was rising. Then we moved when I was 7, and the street lamps across from my window in our new home showed the world in sickly neon shades of buzzing orange and purple.

“San Francisco. Dawn like tarnished silver.” – Virtual Light, William Gibson. 

I wonder what will shift in my son’s world, what his new life will be colored with, all the way across the continent in California. 

Four days after our second son was born, my husband got a call from Apple. THE call. They wanted him and they wanted to make it happen fast. And, we supposed, in our few lucid moments in between bouts of hysterical laughter and morose tears, it really wasn’t a bad time to take a chance on a company that sounds like a perfect fit for everything that my husband wants in a job. I’m feeling gloriously improved just from the mere fact of NOT being pregnant anymore. I have powerful hormones running amok through my body that make the sleep deprivation and fatigue seem like inconsequential trivialities. The little bundle of urping, burping, squelching, screaming need is healthy, hale and utterly beautiful. Our eldest is adjusting to being a big brother with grace, patience and love. After a year of recovery from the karmic kicks in the ass that afflicted us in 2010, we find ourselves balanced enough to actually consider the job offer on its merits, rather than succumb to the overwhelming panic of moving barely a month post-partum.

We have two weeks now to say our goodbyes to the loveliest place we’ve lived so far. Two weeks to help our sensitive, shy, structure-craving, consistency-needing 4-year old understand how this will affect his life. Two weeks to pack up the chaotic mess of a post-partum home. Two weeks to help my family, my parents to understand that we will visit, we do love them, we’re not being irresponsible, this is the right move for our family. Two weeks to say so long to best friends and neighbors who have made our lives so much richer and happier over these past three years.

I know it’s not fair to remind everyone that we’ve always been a flight risk. Because even my husband and I, self-professed technomads, played around with the idea of making this home, this neighborhood a permanent stopping point in our lives. The place where you grow up together, letting your kids hop fences after school and play until dinner. Where you joke about whose child is going to be the trouble maker or heart breaker, and you share a beer together on the back deck with parents just as caring and down to earth as you aspire to be. 

But California’s always been there in the back of our minds. Like London, Sydney and Paris are, figments of possible realities, the what-if’s tempered with the could-be’s. Maybe. Until recently, I wasn’t ready. I kept falling back on the old standard retort that I had too much black in my wardrobe to be happy in California. A pointless defense. My wardrobe is covered in spit up, grass stains, snot, breastmilk and drool. Parenting has granolaed us gradually to a point where we can’t imagine not composting, being part of an organic co-op, or biking to work. If there’s any place for us to find like-minded spirits, I expect we won’t have to look far around SF. 

And so we find ourselves dreaming about Yosemite, Napa, Monterey, redwoods, sushi, surfing, cable cars, and twisty hills in between diaper changes and late afternoon naps. And in those moments when we start to worry, when the details seem impossibly complex and the logistics near impossible, there’s nothing quite as calming for the blood pressure as a peaceful sleeping baby in one’s arms or a cuddling four year old as he whispers “I love you.”

Wish us luck.

It’s hard to stay motivated on the project. I’ve had several mental setbacks, most often dealing with real-world news events that so closely mirror some of the elements in the book that I worry about how it would be accepted, if it would be too gauche so close to a tragic event. I worry about whether it’s even possible to publish the book, since several of my naming conventions have recently been used in other media to describe similar entities or elements in the book…that I came up with in 2007 (grrr). Either of these things can be handled with care and sensitivity – adjusting the story slightly, or simply having faith that the fictional elements of the plot are strong enough to compensate for what now seems like reliance on reality.

It’s also hard to know how to approach the book again after having shelved it for so long. It’s nearly 70,000 unedited words, still missing a completed climax and ending. A monster of a manuscript. The plot is gnarled and twisted after so many revisions that a massive retooling and restructuring is needed before I can fit those fantastic scenes and elements where they really need to be. Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to cram so much information and so much action into this one novel that it needs a prequel for the reader to make sense of it all, or to even become invested in the characters. But that’s not right either – I just need to find a way to charge the scenes with background and engagement every step of the way.

It’s been helpful recently to get back into reading other novels and short stories (which I rarely do when I have the time to sit down and write). I’ve been able to step back and consider some of the elements of my plot that come off as too familiar, tropes that have been used too frequently in the exact same plot outlines. It’s a lovely challenge for me, something that keeps my mind dreaming and scheming during swim practice and play dates and the monotony of second trimester bed rest with this pregnancy.

Telling my husband that I’m working on it again is almost painful – I avert my eyes from his predictable sigh of exasperation each time that he discovers I’m taking the plunge yet again. He’s my most ardent supporter, my sounding board, the one who picks up the pieces when I’m falling apart in misery over something that’s just not working. It’s like admitting to a regression for a terrible habit that we both thought I put behind me long ago. I think the angst and agony over this project is rooted in the length of its presence in our lives, the fact that it’s my first novel, and that it’s a story that we both really love that just hasn’t found the right form yet.

I fortify myself to dive back into the stygian depths with an ample amount of Trader Joes peanut brittle and large quantities of ginger ale (about all my pregnant stomach can handle). Please ensure a ready supply of wiggly, squirmy, giggly “Mama Hugs” from the four year old are available to sustain motivation and forward progress.

I’ve earned an Honorable Mention in The Year’s Best Science Fiction #28 anthology, edited by the legendary Gardner Dozois, for my short story “Sunlight,” published originally by Abyss and Apex. The anthology includes 33 short stories selected for publication, and then a list of around 300 or so stories published in 2010 that earned Honorable Mentions. My friend, Alan Smale, also earned two nominations for stories last year. The list includes Elizabeth Bear, Orson Scott Card, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, William Gibson, Kij Johnson, George R. R. Martin, Cat Rambo, Alastair Reynolds, John Scalzi, Michael Swanwick, Vernor Vinge and Gene Wolfe. I’m a bit star struck, and rather delighted, I must admit.

The book will be available for purchase on July 5th, and you can even go to Amazon now and look inside the book for my name (not the full story though; for that you need to hop over to Abyss and Apex). Yup, I promise. It’s really there.

Now, of course, comes the point where I need to buckle down and add some catchy and gripping plot elements to an otherwise mostly-atmospheric story. The framework is there. The story lends itself to embellishment and structure well. I just need to make up my mind about…well…what it’s really about. And get it down on paper. And edit it. And resubmit. All by a mid-August due date. I’ve written about my hesitance to rewrite before, but really, it’s all about having the right motivation. And a little positive feedback can do wonders for a writer in a dry spell.

I wrote this particular story two years ago at the Outer Banks, sitting on a chair facing the water for a few hours one hazy afternoon, watching my guys building sand castles and body surfing. There’s nothing quite like the overwhelming sensory overload of the beach to crystalize a little creative inspiration. The wind buffeting, the surf pounding, the sand blasting, the sun baking. They drive all those mundane, pointless thoughts from your head about whether you remembered to turn off the water to the slip and slide in the backyard almost 300 miles away, or if the vacuum will wake up the kid during nap time, and reduces you to a simple existence of frolicking, resting and hydrating. I can practically taste the old bay seasoning underneath my fingernails as I crack a crab claw larger than my son’s fist, the first sip of crisp cold beer in the shade, and warm dark chocolate fudge, folded meticulously on cold marble slabs heavier than my car.

Can you tell I’m in beach mode? OBX, I’ve missed you. We’re headed back down on Friday for a few days. We haven’t ever been mid-summer, preferring to go in early September when the crowds thin and the beaches are wide, beautiful and empty. Cross your fingers for us that the traffic won’t be too miserable.

Today feels like an important day in both its significance and its complete and glorious normality.

Today, my husband started a new job – a real job that will actually pay him what they’re contracted to pay him, a job that won’t hold a sword to his neck each day with the impending threat of lost funding or unemployment.

Today, I started a new pattern of homeschooling with my son. Almost 4 years old, he’ll be ready for kindergarden in another year and a half. But with constant “playschool-itis” exacerbating some recently diagnosed health issues, I’m happy to keep him home with me for this precious and unrepeatable time in his life where we simply get to play together. Today’s docket included getting dirty, getting grass stains on our butts, playing in the mud, planting some flowers, and climbing the Caboose. It’s been a good day.

Today, I opened up StoryMill and started writing again. I may not have written very much, and what came out and onto the screen certainly won’t be classified as anything but junk. But it was progress. Dusting out the cobwebs and opening up the shutters. Okay – it felt more like prying them open with a crowbar, but I know the words will come if I just keep at it.

I started writing fiction nearly three years ago as an exercise to sharpen my wits and dust off my right brain functionality. I’ve missed having story lines and characters to meditate on while sitting at the playground. I’ve missed jotting down little tidbits of conversations and observations as I’ve been out and about. And I know I should have come back to it sooner.

Giving myself the freedom to daydream, even in dribs and drabs, is that last step forward I needed to shake the vestiges of the past year away. Today I’m digging my toes in the grass, and listening to my little guy giggle at the worms, and knowing that it’s all going to work out just fine.