Dragon Blossom, or the Story of Emile’s Birth
To no one’s surprise, it is 3:08 in the morning and I am awake, groggily awake. Unlike past bouts of insomnia, on nights when I couldn’t sleep because oh, I was going to start 3rd grade, or when I had to get up this early to make a flight, I am awake by means of a constant prodding from my son, Emile. And despite the sleep deprivation and little ways that it steals sensibility from a person (such as forgetting how to open a door), just writing his name in a blog post thrills me. I’m so happy he’s here with us.
Also unsurprisingly, my wife’s child announced his need to be born on his own terms. Neither she nor I lacks for obstinacy, and both of us have an automatic resistance reflex when we’re told what to do. I’m not a huge fan of DNA as fatalistic decider for human behavior, but I admit there are things like family patterns. And proclaiming that just because Susanne went into labor two days before our scheduled induction means the little one is as stubborn as each of us is premature but fun. Because I’m zonked out these days, I’ll take fun as a sustaining activity.
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A moment of fireworks occurred during the GOP debate this week when the moderator asked Texas Governor Rick Perry if he ‘struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of [the 234 Texas inmates executed in modern times] might have been innocent?’ Before the moderator could even finish the question, the bloodthirsty crowd broke out in applause, raising eyebrows among many observers. The section of transcript describing the interrupted question and subsequent applause has been widely circulated.
Network television ain’t what it used to be, which I suppose makes it something of an old gray mare. With original programming from upstart cable networks like TNT, A&E, AMC, SyFy, and USA, the low-numbered channels have seen a lot of writing talent drift away, especially as draconian managers like 
This is the first piece of writing I’ve published in over three months. During those three months, I’ve let languish the very thing I’ve wanted my entire adult life – an audience who likes my writing and want more of it. I’ve probably lost a few existing readers, and I’ve definitely missed out on many opportunities to build my audience.
Taking a few steps back to the last Monday in August, we were informed that our appointment would be moved earlier by an hour because our regular doctor had called in sick. So we met with another doctor in the practice. Instead of Sarah Palin’s doppelganger, who I’ve come to really like, we got a woman who looked like a soccer mom of 8 children. All I knew about her before this appointment was that she’s the doctor who does the circumcisions in the practice, and she’s kind of klutzy. Those are two tastes that I’m sure don’t taste great together, but on this day, I could be unconcerned with her gracefulness and focus on Susanne’s internal exam. Had our own doctor Palin been doing the examination, we’d have a clear idea of when to try to induce; as it was, we were going to have to wait for the fill-in to contact Susanne’s doctor, who would then call us, probably on Tuesday.
At writer’s conferences and in critique groups people throw phrases like “social networks” and “platform building” around like cheap confetti. Judging from the glazed look on the eyes of many writers, there seems to be a disconnect between knowing one should work on their online presence, and how to do just that. It’s not enough to tell folks to build a network, because that’s too abstract a concept in a universe of hundreds of social networking Web sites and applications. Worse, all of the jargon is so intimidating many writers begin to justify their absence from the market. “Well, I need to have time to write, not promote myself,” one romance writer told me at this year’s PNWA. Others that I’ve spoken with don’t see the benefit to all of these online sites—it looks to them like a lot of time spent tooling around the interwebs for next to no return on their investment. And that’s a shame.
I will say right off the bat that I’m not the biggest fan of Dancing with the Stars. I like it enough to watch when someone I like—or greatly dislike—is on the show, much like I’ll watch American Idol on only a spotty basis. I really like dancing as an art form, especially given my total lack of physical grace, because I love to see the human form do things I didn’t know were possible, and then whoa, there’s music and lots of feathers to boot! But DWTS sometimes makes me sad, because the “stars” in question often seem to be scrapping for whatever vestiges of glory they can still obtain, and the whole faded Lola a la Copacobana thing is not my speed.
Emerging writers are tired people. We’re working on building our networks, improving our storytelling and writing, marketing ourselves as writers, and fretting over query letters to entice agents to represent us. The idea that novelists sit around eating bon bons and dictating prose into a recorder is a non-author’s fantasy. Real writers wear out their keyboards and keep going.
Trans/plant/portation 