Category: Life

Life

December Lull

K.A. Doore

twinkle lights Christmas tree

After writing daily since June, it’s about time to take a breather. In those six months, I wrote the first draft of a short story, finished a round of really intense edits, and wrote another first draft of a novel. Having wrapped up said first draft, there’s a little wiggle room before the next big project and I intend to grab on to that with both hands and not let go until the holidays are over and the new year has begun.

That doesn’t mean I won’t write at all – I just won’t have a daily word count goal. Writing will come in bits and pieces as I turn my brain from this last project to the next one – a darker fantasy revenge story. I have some research to do and an old, tired draft to pick apart and figure out exactly how to fix. The beauty of writing is that it’s just like any other skill you hone over the years: you continue to get better. Which means looking back at this draft from – *gasp* – early 2014 is making me cringe, but also helping me realize that I have improved and am continuing to improve. And: I know exactly how to fix it.

So. December goals. Research. Re-read. Restructure. Then begin rewriting. But also:

I’m going to read. It is quiet and cold and perfect blanket snuggling weather and I have a pile of books to read. Goodness, there is just nothing more perfect in the world than wrapping yourself in a warm blanket while sipping hot cocoa and reading. Well, aside from cold morning runs. 🙂

What are your plans for December?

Draft Zero, Life, OIBM, Writing

#Thankful

K.A. Doore

november-128

I had every intention to get in on the one-a-day thankful meme, but then it was mid-November and, well. But I firmly believe it’s never too late to be thankful, so I’ve compiled my list for Thanksgiving itself. 26 things because this year, Thanksgiving fell on the 26th.

26 Things I’m Thankful For:
(or: A Thanksgiving Thankstravaganza)

26) Tucson and it’s gloriously wonderful chaotic weather.
25) Our fuzzy furry crazy cats.
24) Gainful employment.
23) BPAL and other good scents.
22) Happy twinkle lights.
21) Standing desks.
20) My overall good health.
19) Deadlifts and squats and everything they’ve taught me about true strength.
18) The local Thanksgiving 5k.
17) The inspiration that comes during a good run.
16) Zombies, Run!
15) All the amazing musicians who keep making music and life.
14) All the amazing authors who keep writing.
13) Living during a time when we have access to such a variety and depth of great arts and music and books.
12) My agent.
11) Coffee.
10) The opportunities that I’ve worked for and stumbled across.
9) Writing and the purpose it has given my life.
8) The Internet.
7) This blogging community.
6) Being able to cross the world in a matter of hours.
5) Growing older and all the experiences and wisdom that comes along.
4) Financial stability.
3) Family – chosen and blood-related.
2) My friends.
1) My wife.

❤

—–

Here is my current progress on OIBM, a YA fantasy ruckus about magical girls, the apocalypse, and exactly whose fault it is:

Also known as: DONE.

Yes, I moved my wordcount target down. Yes, it needs about 20k more to be a viable novel. But this is draft zero, aka a very long and convoluted outline, and should come in way under my eventual goal.

Now I’m going to let it sit and ferment and work on something else. I have an older novel to tweak and rewrite in the meantime. I definitely need some time away from this one, because it is missing something crucial and being so close to it has blinded me to what that could be. Distance will give me the perspective I need to fix this beast – I hope.

This weekend, though, I’m going to read and cook and hang out with friends and family and get outside and read and maybe start brainstorming and read.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at chez Doore!

Life

Seattle!

K.A. Doore

seattle (1 of 28)

Well, we’re back! We got home Tuesday afternoon with plenty of time to get groceries and do some cooking and laundry and chores and – of course we just pet cats and went to bed early instead.

Seattle was good. It was amazing and autumnal and everything we remembered and then it was time to go home, and that was good, too. It felt a lot like closure, honestly. We left after only two years there and neither of us was ready to go at the time. We’ve missed it for the last five years and built it up more than a little in our memories. So going back was like coming home, in a way – it was so familiar, (almost) everything the way we had left it, but we were different.

We exulted in the food and the sights and the leaves and yes, even the rain, but by Monday we were ready to go home – back to Arizona and sunlight and open skies and starry nights. Seattle was perfect for us when we lived there and it was a wonderful place to visit, but I don’t know when we’ll be back. It was good to finally be able to say goodbye.

Whew, that got heavy. Here, have some photos after the cut.

Continue reading “Seattle!” →

Life

Lighting Up the Office

K.A. Doore

I have an office that, I’m sure like many offices, has slowly been filled up with clutter over the years. It has become acceptable to shove things in there when we are busy or tired or simply don’t know where to put the thing. This made me reticent to actually use my office as an office. Sure, my tower computer and standing desk are in there and I still use those to edit my photos, but to spend actual time in my office, doing actual work was unheard-of.

Yet, the rest of the apartment has proved inadequate. Distractions (aka cats) abound. I use those spaces for other things, like goofing around and interneting, and the shadow of those activities linger when I try to sit and be serious. As multitudes of other authors and basic productivity gurus advise, it really is best to have a separate, dedicated space to work in.

Back to the office. For over a decade I would rearrange furniture on/around my birthday (don’t ask [see: virgo]). It seemed appropriate to use this latent ritual to fix what I didn’t like about my office. I’d been putting off actually doing anything because we’re moving anyway in two months, maybe four, maybe six, but then I realized that this was capital ‘s’ Stupid. I owed it to myself to create a space at home, and I owed it to my bank account – coffee shops frown on those who just come in and take up space without purchasing a consumable.

So I cranked up the a/c, rolled up my metaphorical sleeves, and yanked out every piece of furniture without a monitor on it. I brought my old sitting desk back in from another room, moved the bikes, removed any and all clutter, and then – last but perhaps the most important – strung up happy lights.

Now I have my own space and after a few days of using it, I understand. It’s honestly a difference of night and day.

Perhaps now I can start making a dent in our overstuffed tea cabinet instead of contributing to the coffers of the nearest coffee shop.

august-168

august-169

Life

This Week’s Hike: Arizona Trail, Molino Basin Part 2

K.A. Doore

august-123

The Molino Basin Campground is closed during the summer, which I should have taken as a sign. This must be an amazing trail in the winter. In the summer… it was hot and sticky and gross for the first mile. There are a few scattered trees offering a (very) brief respite, but otherwise the trail is completely exposed.

On my first hike, I went south on the Arizona Trail, starting at the campground. I thought it was just called Molino Basin Trail, but have since learned that, yes, it was a part of MBT, but the trail is actually the Arizona Trail, which starts in Mexico and ends in Utah – 800 miles long. It’s kind of insane.

This week I hiked to the next trailhead before turning around because next week, I want to start where I left off. I’m interested in seeing how much of the trail I can do – piecemeal, of course. As long as I bring enough water and slather on enough sunscreen, I’ll be fine. 🙂

 

Hike Stats
Water consumed: just shy of 3 litres
Hours hiked: 2.75
Wildlife Spotted: bees, butterflies (black, orange, and yellow), smoky grouse, & white-tailed deer
Elevation at Start: 4370 ft
Smells: Arid, occasionally putrid when the trail dipped into the basin, very briefly pine
Sounds: The wind through long grass, the drone of cars on the road, which I never really left far behind on this hike, screams of birds, and the rattle of a certain kind of bug that had me looking for snakes more than once.

Continue reading “This Week’s Hike: Arizona Trail, Molino Basin Part 2” →

Life

This Week’s Hike: Green Mountain Trail

K.A. Doore

august-52

I decided to head a bit further up the mountain to find a cooler and shadier hike this week. The basin was all well and good, but it was also a little – okay a lot – exposed. Only a few miles up the road there are plenty of pines to cool things down.

I’ve started up the Green Mountain Trail before, but we only made it a mile or so in because we weren’t prepared for the constant uphill. This time, I knew what to expect and therefore savored each precious flat run that much more.

Technically, you’re supposed to start at the top of the trail and work your way down, but I adhere to the rule of Uphill First, because there’s nothing like breezing through several miles straight downhill then realizing now you have to go straight back up.

It was a quiet, clear morning, with excellent views of the city and Thimble Peak once I got high enough.

I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Hike Stats
Water consumed: just shy of 3 liters
Hours hiked: 2.5
Wildlife Spotted: a few Mexican Jays, several squirrels, and so. many. lizards
Elevation at Start: 5830 ft
Smells: Mostly pine, some sand and sunscreen
Sounds: The drone of the road for a little while, then bees and flies and the incessant soft rustle of pine needles.

Continue reading “This Week’s Hike: Green Mountain Trail” →

Life

This Week’s Hike: Molino Basin

K.A. Doore

august-7

We won’t know whether or not we’re making a very big move for another month. That’s four weeks of not being able to plan, not being able to have anything solid, of drifting – but it is still four weeks of life. I need to take advantage of that, of every moment we have left in this gorgeous desert.

Hence my new weekly goal: going for a new hike in the Sonoran Desert each week. And not just that, but bringing my camera along.

I love taking pictures, but aside from a few here and there for friends, I just… haven’t been. So this is a three-fold goal of getting out of the house, exploring new places, and practicing my photography skillz.

This week I picked Molino Basin and a portion of the Arizona Trail. I should clarify that my goal isn’t to hike these to completion, but to hike until I’m halfway through my camelpak – which holds 3 liters of water – and turn around. So I won’t usually make it more than a few hours. Still – it was a gorgeous hike.

Photos below!

Continue reading “This Week’s Hike: Molino Basin” →

Life

hello August

K.A. Doore

august3

The month of figs and warm sunsets and bats and starry evenings and fireflies and thunderstorms and peaches and obscene amounts of sweat and virgos and blueberries and the smell of cut grass and leos and cow walks and morning hikes and sunflowers and palo verde beetles and double rainbows and birthdays and squeezing every last drop out of summer.

Life

Everything is (finally) so Gay

K.A. Doore

SarahAmy018

And it’s kind of amazing.

I went for a hike yesterday morning, so I was away for many hours of the initial celebration. A friend texted me when they released the decision, so I wasn’t completely taken by surprise when I returned to the internet where everything, literally everything, was covered in rainbows.

My wife and I married in 2012 without any of the legal bits. If you’d asked me then to make a gander as to when I thought marriage would be opened up to everyone, regardless of sex, I would have said seven years, five if we were being super optimistic. But only a year later, it was legalized in Minnesota, the state we wed (and again, legally). Last year, in Arizona, the state we live. And now, everywhere. A round of applause for 2015, guys.

I still wonder if we should have waited. But then I remind myself that that’s nonsense: we couldn’t have known then. As I told Dr Lady and my family, it’s not fair to ask us to plan our lives around the whims of the majority and the courts. Now here we are, married for three years, legal for one in our own state, and now legal everywhere.

This means a lot for us, for everyone. It means we don’t have to narrow our job search to just certain states. It means when we have a kid, we won’t have to jump through more and more legal hoops in case we move. It means we can travel with that kid wherever, and not have to worry about hospitals or other stupid things. It means the United States is finally catching up to the world in at least one small, but still important, way.

It also means we’re not done. Not by a long shot. Homeless LGBTQ youth still need protection. Heck, LGBTQ youth in general are still vulnerable in many places. Transphobia is still very alive and very deadly. Racism is still imbedded in our system and culture and LGBTQ of color have their own problems that we need to address.

This is all beautiful and wonderful and the show of support from every corner has been heartwarming. Over the past fifteen, ten, five years I’ve watched so many friends and family come to accept that being gay is just another way of experiencing life. But in the back of my mind, I can already hear people brushing their hands of our issues, of related issues, and saying we’re done here. I sincerely hope that’s not the case.

For this weekend, anyway, I will choose to believe it’s not and bask in the rainbow-hued love.

Life

An Open Letter to the French Language

K.A. Doore

Ciao bella!

Wait, no –

Salut!

Ça va? I hope you’re doing all right. It’s… well, it’s been a while. When was it we last saw each other? Oh yeah… for a month in high school. Although that short time together helped change my mind about you, it wasn’t enough, and the intervening years only widened the gap between us.

I thought we’d never see each other again, frankly. I flirted with Greek and Hebrew, had a fling with Russian (which I ended when she reminded me too much of you), went steady with German and finally got serious with Latin. I have to be honest, German and Latin really spoiled me – I got to pronounce every vowel and consonant. And the rules! I always knew where I stood with them. They were predictable, reliable, and – yes – a little harsh.

But linguistics poisoned me against you. Even though I know no single language is better than any other, I still ridiculed your tendency to eat your vowels and drop your consonants. I saw these linguistic proclivities not as the creative and enterprising innovations that they are, but as a sign of your laziness and decline. After all, you used to pronounce all those letters and syllables. Back in the 1400s.

As I grew up and more or less officially moved in with English, I thought less and less of you. After all, I wasn’t even seeing German any more, why would I try to reconnect with you?

Then we visited Brussels. I – erroneously – thought I could get by with my German. Technically, Belgium is a trilingual country, and I was on speaking terms with two out of three. Unfortunately, I didn’t do my due diligence until a few weeks before our trip, whereupon I discovered my error – Brussels is predominantly French-speaking. But I didn’t even want to talk to you, let alone catch up, so I fumbled through our trip, feeling awkward and clueless and lost at every step.

I returned to English feeling chastised and confused. My feelings for you weren’t what I had expected. I found myself increasingly annoyed at my own inability to understand you, and I grew angry with myself for not even giving you a chance. But no! It was your fault for being so ornery! I couldn’t be wrong. If you would just pronounce all your consonants, maybe I could understand you. Maybe if you just met me half way…

We fought. For the first time, and the last. I didn’t want to recognize my feelings for you. I didn’t want to admit I was wrong. But soon it became too obvious. All this time, you had waited for me. All this time, I demanded you meet me in the middle while I kept taking steps back. When I was refusing to even try to understand you, how could I expect you to change for me?

You know, we always cling the hardest when we’re about to let go.

This is all to say: je suis désolée. J’ai tort.

Can we try this again? Start at the beginning? I know we can’t pretend the rest didn’t happen, but I’m willing to give it a chance. I can’t promise I won’t trip on your elisions, or slip into a German accent, or bemoan your vowel choices, but I can promise to respect you. You are your own, beautiful language, with unique morphemes, a high density of final-consonant deletion, and a bizarre fixation on cows. You deserve to be taken seriously.

How about it?

❤

Me

P.S. Duolingo has been amazing at helping me understand you better. I'm glad you two are friends.