Author Archives: joyceusagi

I guess you could title these two photos as what a difference a year makes. In the first photo, I had no idea that I was working with a gaited horse. I just knew I had an unknown horse of unknown background, more or less, and that he desperately wanted to have his own people. Plus he had absolutely no sense of boundaries, much less that “whoa” in hand meant “stand still.”

How things change. I pulled hair on Marker about midsummer and sent it off to Texas A & M for DNA typing. I was half-expecting Morgan to come back in the mix, but what did come back was…Quarter Horse, Missouri Fox Trotter, and Tennessee Walker. A bit of reading revealed that the Walker influence is strong in the Fox Trotter breed, and that there are some who are crossing QHs with Fox Trotters. As a result, I suspect that this is what Marker is–QH x Fox Trotter. His temperament matches that of Fox Trotters, for the most part, but where I see the huge influence of Fox Trotter? Under saddle work.

It’s probably a good thing that I had nearly a year’s worth of riding on the boy before I learned about this mix. I knew he needed to come into condition, but had no idea about his past training or anything along those lines. So I followed my training instincts, honed by nearly 28 years around assorted professional trainers. I’ve never been particularly wedded to any one training school of thought but have taken in bits and pieces that seem to fit what each horse I’m riding needs. I figured out pretty quickly that Marker needed conditioning before I moved up to canter with him, and noticed that not only was he inclined to swap leads easily on the lunge line (which can also be a sign that the horse needs to work on building strength) as well as under saddle, but that he had a lot of problems picking up leads, period. Plus he needed to work on seat and leg aids, accepting contact, and comfort with a rider who uses seat as well as hand and voice.

All of that takes time. That plus I wanted to expose him to Life while under saddle, so…we spent a lot of time on gravel roads just schooling, working on contact and aids in the snaffle bit while exposing him to Scary Stuff. As his trust in me grew, I became able to talk him past things that worried him. I also noticed that while he Saw Things, he was much less reactive to them and more likely to check in with me about “is this something scary?”

But then there was the gait. Once we moved into the Western saddle, it became clear that what I thought was a smooth jog was some sort of easy gait that wasn’t walking or trotting. And that he really, really liked doing it. But the real “AHA!” moment was when we went to push some fence-creeping calves back into their field, and he lined out after them in a big fast trot. Mocha would have gone into a gallop but…he was really covering ground with that trot. Hmm. I pulled hair, got the results, and decided it was time to find out what, if anything, I needed to do differently in training him further. The gaitedness explained why he might have some cantering issues–amongst other things, once I started reading, I realized that it was harder for him to pick up a good canter from his easy gait, which I think is fox trot. That gaited horses do better when you ask them to canter from a walk, reversing what’s typical with a non-gaited horse, where canter from walk is harder than canter from trot or, in Marker’s case, from an easy gait.

Meanwhile, as it turns out, my focus on just riding while developing contact and responsiveness to leg and seat as well as voice and hand was just the thing to do. I had figured that he was ready to move up to a curb bit by midsummer, but that the bits I had weren’t going to work for him. Searches online didn’t turn up the bit I wanted, which was a loose jaw medium port curb with a copper roller that had snaffle loops as well as curb rein loops, so that I could turn it into a Western Pelham. As it turned out, I found it in the local feed store, on sale, and that I should have been looking for it under a different name. Not that it mattered. I started him out in the curb with two sets of reins for a week or so, but moved him on to one set of reins and neck reining. He’s making great progress at this level. We’ve edged into doing short canter pieces, per what I’ve been reading from experienced gaited horse trainers, but I’m holding off on big stuff until we can do more work on the flat. Right now this work happens in a sloped pasture field.

Under saddle work isn’t the only place where he’s showing improvement. Last summer he was very pushy at the gate, very pushy when being handled, and had issues with standing still on a ground tie when given the whoa command. We made some progress on this throughout the winter with the guidance of the old Mocha mare, but this summer when they moved away from the big herd and there were fewer distractions really gave us the time needed to focus on improving the behavior.

Now I can open the wire gate wide. Marker stands and waits for me to finish. I halter him, then halter Mocha. Lead them both out, ground tie them, then close the gate. Old Mocha has preferences about where she walks on the road, so for part of the way she walks on one side of me, then exchanges sides with Marker, then switches again before we go to the truck where I sit on the tailgate and hold their buckets while they eat their grain. These days they’ll just about automatically do the switch without me cueing them. They stand quietly next to each other for eating grain and grooming. And…Marker has learned to stand quietly. Much of that is Mocha’s influence. The old mare has always had strong opinions about proper horse behavior, and she’s been busy doing her share of the training. Sometimes just having her stand there, cock a hind leg, lower her head and drowse has had a soothing effect on him.

I’m happy with how things have gone with the training this summer. Where we go from here–well, we shall see. But it’s gonna be fun.

Burnout. That’s something we all dance with as writers.

I hit the wall late last fall and didn’t work my way past burnout until just recently. Oh, I could keep writing on the work-in-progress, though it felt like a slog to get my usual 2000 words a day composed. But it was the only thing I could even begin to do on the writing front. Everything else–other stuff I had committed to, including volunteer activities as well as participating in virtual conventions just felt like I was getting more responsibilities piled on without any benefit to me. I did everything people recommend to organize my life and keep it going, but…I still kept feeling like I was dragging my way through the ’60s TV version of soul-sucking quicksand. And I had taken several organizing courses for writers just that spring!

Nothing helped. I couldn’t think of ideas outside of the work-in-progress. No short story notions. Even contemplating prompts made me flinch. I couldn’t write blogs beyond the weekly writing accountability posts I had been forcing myself to do. Keeping up with certain tasks became really difficult. I didn’t do any quilting or embroidery work. TV–which is something I’m not wild about to begin with–just didn’t appeal. I couldn’t make any headway with promoting my work because no matter what I did, nothing seemed to happen to get more sales–which fed into a continuing sensation of why am I doing this? Add to that getting cut in the first round of an indie writer contest with one of the nastiest four star reviews I’ve ever received, from a reviewer who openly admitted that this particular story’s soft magic system was a style they did not enjoy, and…that killed any notion of me writing further stories in that world.

Worst of all, I couldn’t find much enjoyment in reading–and I am one of those voracious readers who devours books eagerly. Now some of that is due to a developing cataract, but I also just. couldn’t. do. it.

I was irritable, annoyed at the world, and the only bright spot besides the work-in-progress was working with Marker. Last winter was a training struggle for us, but I’ll write about our current training status in another blog.

Yeah, there were things happening around me in real life that made the burnout worse. Politics. Aging stuff and dealing with long-term planning. Decisions to be made there. A wakeup call on the health front–not me, fortunately, but the spouse. Downsizing decisions. Books to sell–and absolutely nothing was moving, including things that normally sold well such as the fantasy series. On top of that, Substack appeared to be on the brink of imploding, I was losing my newsletter program (TinyLetter), and there were major changes happening on the email newsletter front (DMARC, DKIP, etc etc etc) as well as the Substack political mess. I bounced between several platforms before I found one that seemed to work, only to see my subscription numbers collapse. I couldn’t justify the expense of the top-rated programs based on my numbers.

What a mess.

Solving this issue didn’t happen very quickly. It’s fortunate that I do not depend upon my writing income to survive, because otherwise I would have been screwed over big time. It’s taken nearly a year to pull myself out of this mess and I’m not entirely sure it’s completely gone.

But. I started thinking about things late last spring. The first thing I realized is that I’ve turned out a LOT of work during the pandemic and following social isolation. The four books of the Martiniere Legacy. Beating the Apocalypse. The three books of People of the Martiniere Legacy. Federation Cowboy. The A Different Life duology. Becoming Solo. Bearing Witness. The Cost of Power trilogy. Something like sixteen works of novella-length or longer, since the fall of 2020. At times I was juggling a Kindle Vella serial, a Substack serial, and another long form writing project, while telling myself that yes, I could multitask. Oh, and I also released a short story collection, Fabulist and Fantastical Worlds.

Then I recognized the phenomenon…my ability to create was falling into the same sort of brain fade that I and other teachers experienced on a yearly basis with regard to reading. I had the great good fortune to work with experienced, long-term teachers who loved reading and creative pursuits. We even had a small exchange library in the staff room. One of the subjects that sticks in my mind from our lunchroom discussions was how the ability to read complex books faded over the course of the school year. At the beginning of the school year, complex books weren’t just easy to read, they were fun. As the year progressed, it became harder and harder to focus on those books, until at the end of the school year, our preference was for lighter reads. The ability to read improved over the summer, just in time for the cycle to start all over again.

I realized that the structures I had started to create for myself at the end of 2022 into 2023 just weren’t working, in part because they were, bluntly, a time suck. Yeah, it was great to have an executive meeting with myself every week and use that to plan the week ahead–but writing it up as well as taking the time to think about it ended up being a chore. I wasn’t getting stuff done because it was too overwhelming and in all the push to get stuff done I wasn’t recharging myself.

So. I stopped flogging myself with the weekly executive meetings. I gave myself permission to stop writing anything unless I really wanted to do it, with the exception of editorial work on the work-in-progress. I kept putting off attack ideas. I looked at what was bugging me about my office–primarily rampant disorganization that made me tired every time I looked at it–and asked myself what was missing. As it turned out, I needed a place to sort paper and write by hand comfortably. I pushed out my expectations for the next big project. I looked at why I wasn’t blogging and realized I needed that little endorphin rush from Substack feedback for my blogs instead of the black hole of nothingness that happened elsewhere.

I gave myself space.

Am I back? Not entirely. But I have ideas for several blogs, some of which require research and planning. I’ve finished a short story draft and will be revising it next week. I have a half-finished concept that I’ll be poking at for the next few months which mixes already-written work with new additions. I need to revamp my website and make it leaner, more effective. All sorts of little, niggling things that need to be simplified that I now have time to do. I’m not planning to start the next big project for a couple of months, depending on some things lying ahead.

At the very least, I feel like I’m getting away from that dire swamp. I’m not completely clear of the burnout–but I’m reading again. Ideas are stirring.

I guess that’s enough.

Sigh. This is where I put in the plug for the new release and a plug for the Fund for Horse Cookies.

Link for The Cost of Power trilogy

Buy the horses some Cookies!

(vector by happymay, from Depositphotos, uploaded in 2014)

So why is it that it took until I was sixty-six years old to regularly start making my bed without being prompted?

Until recently, I had the attitude toward housework as a necessary evil that needed to be done but not necessarily organized. Oh, I did the usual chores but stuff like making the bed wasn’t that big a deal. If anything, I shoved a lot of housework chores into “must be crammed into a short period of time so I can get back to doing what I want/what the job demands.” Which…made sense, but also chunked up housework into big jobs that got put off instead of doing them in bits and pieces.

What brought this change? Was it the lockdown and continued social distancing? Sorting through stuff to downsize in my elder years? A weakening of my feminist principles? Or just a factor that “well, I’m retired and at home, I need something to do to distract me from writing?”

Or all of the above, perhaps?

I’m not sure. Part of this move is, I think, a reflection of my move toward organizing and simplifying my office, and moving outward from that. Mucking out the shelves that held a lot of my office supplies went a long ways toward organizing the office because most of what I need is either easily accessible or visible. Though I do need to clean papers off of my writing desk (and that is noted in the planner for this week).

Some of this increased focus on organizing and planning housework is also a reflection of dealing with aging and the consequences thereof. It’s a lot easier to manage the house if the piles of books and papers are…fewer. Not so much to trip over, knock over, or get lost.

I’ve also gotten past the notion that certain things need to be blocked together. Vacuuming…well, that needs to be the whole house. But dusting before vacuuming? Not every week, and not at the same time.

Other factors come into play, too. Making my bed wasn’t very easy when we had a mattress on the floor (which was spouse’s preference for many years, until I put my foot down for a platform setup because my hips were objecting to the floor placement). Even though we got a platform, I still didn’t make the bed regularly for years, in part because access to both sides became a pain due to tight quarters. But even when we moved and had more space, I still wasn’t doing it regularly.

Then we got a new, thicker mattress. While the sheets and bedding still fit, I found that I needed to redo the bed a lot because sheets and bedding didn’t stay tucked. Making the bed daily got around that obstacle. But a change in bedding style from years ago also made a big difference. Unlike when younger, I don’t use a bedspread over blankets, but either have a quilt or a comforter on the bed. I don’t tuck the pillows underneath the bedspread because I don’t have a bedspread and the quilt/comforter isn’t that long (lemme tell you, getting that coverage over the pillows so that it didn’t look like I just pulled it over the top was a pain, much less getting things even…yikes). But somehow, as a result of the new mattress, I realized I could just turn down the top edge like they do in hotels…so much easier. Now I usually make the bed when I get dressed for the day, unless something such as plans to wash sheets or travel interferes.

Allergies also play a role. With the increase in wildfire smoke every summer, both spouse and I are more sensitive to house dust and pollen. Getting organized about cleaning reduces allergen exposures for both of us.

Acknowledging my ADHD is a factor as well. I tend to organize myself more these days because the combination of aging and ADHD is not fun. Add ADHD to the typical aging working memory overload (which I think is a big factor in senior forgetting about stuff that isn’t dementia-related, especially in retirement) and I’ve seen the need to pull myself together with external reminders that work for me. That last piece is the crucial one, because there are a lot of systems that bury themselves in complexity which ends up being problematic in its own way. Or the system relies on handwriting which can be problematic with my arthritic hands. If a system is too complicated or too reliant on handwriting, it ends up falling by the wayside (such as my attempt at writing accountability last year which dragged me directly into extensive burnout).

I think I have a system that seems to work, for now, based on my current circumstances. But I still laugh at myself, because now I’m going through and doing housework stuff that a few years ago I would have snorted at doing.

Like bed making.

On the other hand, it is nice to have the bedding in order at bedtime, and not rumpled chaos.

Hey, if you like what you just read, don’t forget to toss a coin into the Deprived Horses’ Cookie Fund over at my Ko-fi.

(no, they’re not really deprived, they just think they are)

I learn something new from every book I write, even after twenty-five odd books out there.

Sometimes what I learn is a writing craft detail. Other times it’s a production or promotion detail.

I’ve learned a lot from the last four years of writing the assorted Martiniere Family Saga books. But I had several explicit reasons for working on The Cost of Power. First, I wanted to finish some loose ends left in the other series, most explicitly the hints at a multiverse and how that works. Second, well, I’ve written about taking a villain and turning him (Philip Martiniere) into a more shades-of-gray protagonist capable of redemption. Philip can still be a jerk, but he’s not the irrationally sociopathic character he was in the other Martiniere books. In some aspects, The Cost of Power is in part Philip’s redemption story.

Also, I decided that there was one big universe story left in this book world, and that I could accomplish what I wanted to learn best with familiar characters. A writing exercise, you might say, where I could focus on my story goals.

The most important piece, however? For the first time, I mindfully sat down to write an entire series–in this case a trilogy–before publishing it.

Why would I want to do that? Well, for one thing, I’ve learned in my years of writing that I have this…ahem…tendency to throw completely new notions into a series about two-thirds of the way through. I did it with Goddess’s Honor and with the Netwalk Sequence. The first Martiniere Legacy series was somewhat of an attempt to write a series but the fourth book really threw things into a whiplash. Not only that, I didn’t originally conceive of the books in this manner, and really didn’t have a coherent series arc. Oh, I fixed it in rewrites but there was a lot of pain and agony in the process. I wanted to cut back on the agony.

How best to change this, especially since I wanted a flexible structure to reflect inevitable diversions from the original plan?

First, I roughly devised book and series arcs. I knew what the endings were more or less going to be for each book, and how the series was going to wrap up. I wrote chapter synopses for each book.

Then I turned to Scrivener as an organizing tool. I’m not fond of drafting in that program, but it’s a great place to keep my research notes as well as a chapter-by-chapter version of the work in progress. I drafted chapters in Word, then pasted them into Scriv. That served a couple of purposes. First, if I wanted to look something up, instead of searching or scrolling an entire document, I could look at the chapter or synopsis to find the information. Second, this allowed me to establish the Scrivener version as the definitive first draft. I did corrections and edits in Scriv.  Finally, I had my research and character notes as well as the synopsis under Scrivener’s Research tab.

When I revised the synopsis, I used strikethrough to eliminate the old stuff without deleting, just in case I needed to recover it or place that concept in a different chapter. If I wanted to look at my original draft, I could pull up the chapter file from Word. I didn’t have to mess with complex versioning methods while in that particular book. When I came up with outtakes and snippets that helped me understand a particular character or scene, I stuffed it in its own file under Research in Scriv (about the only time I drafted in Scrivener).

That’s just the drafting lessons I learned this time around.

Production issues–as always, I learned little things about details. Today I got annoyed when I learned that I have to produce an entirely different-sized cover if I want to produce a paperback in Amazon as well as Ingram. Um, I’ll stick with Ingram. It’s just a tiny difference in size because Amazon produces thicker covers, but I’ve heard enough quality and packaging complaints about the ‘Zon that I’m not gonna go into the hassle of making a different cover entirely, just over fractions of sizes (I make my covers in BookBrush). Plus if I decide to go with a cover artist, I’m not paying for TWO different paperback covers. Nuh-uh.

I’m also going to have to do some different things when it comes to saving file structures as well, because my files are a mess that desperate needs fixing. Well, that will be the next project.

Meanwhile?

The Cost of Power is out there in the world. Return and Crucible are available at all ebook retailers, and Redemption comes out on September 10th. The Return paperback is now available. Crucible will be available soon, and Redemption as well. I…um…made a mistake when loading Crucible and didn’t put it on preorder with one vendor. That threw off the release timeline.

Linking to the Amazon series page here for convenience–it’s also available on Apple, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.

And, as always, if you want to help me keep the horses happy with a cookie or two, you can contribute to the Poor Cookie-Deprived Horses Fund here.

(note: they aren’t really Cookie-Deprived, much as they will claim otherwise.)

For some reason, I end up buying horses in August. Maybe it’s because prices are usually better since people want to get horses off of their books before winter, but probably it’s just because that’s when the timing is right for me to buy.

Mocha came into my life nineteen years ago. Marker a year ago.

It’s been a ride. Mocha was my show horse and she was pretty decent at that. Marker is…well, we’re still figuring it out. Mocha is royally bred for cutting and reining, but I decided years ago that her bloodlines were common enough that I didn’t need to breed her, plus she was my only riding horse and I didn’t feel the need to be raising a foal (plus the expense, plus until nine years ago I wasn’t in a good place to raise a foal the way I would want to). I didn’t get Marker until after Mocha retired due to arthritis in her knees that led to her starting to trip and fall during our rides. More than that, she just didn’t have energy to do what she loved–and it broke my heart to feel her try to GO when she just didn’t have it in her, at age twenty-three. She is now settling into a nice retirement, getting handled daily and fed treats, with good days and bad days. Still more good days than bad, but the bad days hurt. On the other hand, in summer pasture with Marker, she is definitely the Queen. Besides her Very Own Gelding, she has the over-the-fence buddy retired gelding who has been madly in love with her for the past several summers. The old girl shows a definite preference for the quiet company of a small number of geldings over other mares–she is quite happy this summer with Her Boys. While Marker will try to boss her around occasionally, it’s still clear that She Is In Charge and that the pasture rules are Hers. Her weight is good. Her teeth are excellent. She still comes up with Cunning Plans to get treats, and it’s clear that there is The Mocha Way and The Wrong Way even in her retirement. She’ll be strong-minded until she dies.

Enter Marker. The horse of mystery, starting with just how old he is–somewhere between seven and nine is the best guess now, based on vet assessment of his teeth. No papers. He was sold to me as Quarab–Quarter Horse and Arabian–but over the past few months, as he’s matured physically and come into condition, I’ve been wondering about the Arabian piece. I thought that perhaps it was Morgan because he didn’t quite look Quarter Horse, either. But he gaits–and while gaitedness happens in some lines of Quarter Horses (and Arabians as well, though the gaited Arabian I knew was in the hands of someone who managed to get darn near every horse in her barn to gait, so…), it’s more common in Morgans.

I pulled hair and sent it off to Texas A&M for DNA typing. Those results were fascinating–and came back (in order of probability) 1.) Quarter Horse, 2.) Missouri Fox Trotter, and 3.) Tennessee Walker. Not a hint of Arabian in the mix. No Morgan. A little searching revealed that there are people who cross QHs with Fox Trotters. He has more of a flat-kneed movement common in Western Pleasure-bred Quarter Horses than any elevated movement you see in Arabians or Morgans, which kept throwing me a little bit (a daisy-cutter rather than high knees). His head carriage is NOT Morgan or Arabian, but the level top line of a Quarter Horse. But…the way he’s put together doesn’t match a lot of Quarter Horses, either. And his butt isn’t a QH butt. I figured that since the second two options were gaited breeds rather than what you would expect from a straight QH (which would be Thoroughbred or Morgan), that he definitely wasn’t all QH but QH mixed with a gaited horse.

After the results, I kept eying the way he’s put together. Hmm. There are certain physical similarities to the Impressive-bred Western Pleasure horses I’ve known, and some of his temperament quirks match one particular tough Impressive-bred gelding I knew in lessons. But. No real way to know. My best guess is that he is a WP-bred Quarter Horse crossed with Fox Trotter (he doesn’t move like a Walker. I think his gait is a fox trot). Nonetheless, he’s matured over the summer so that leans more toward the younger side of his probable age range. I’ll never know for certain, most likely.

Some things I do know. He naturally parks out and will take that stance frequently when saddled up. He looooves people and treats, but will happily settle for scratches and petting. He’s pushy on the ground, but that has improved a LOT. One of the things that made me question the Arabian side was the way he handles being reprimanded, especially as we moved past the “getting-to-know-you” stage. He didn’t react the way I would expect an Arabian or Arabian-cross to behave, and as we settled in together he became much less anxious about reprimands. He responds to reining cues when asked to spin, as if he’s been trained (and I don’t think I’m that good at putting on those cues). His undersaddle behavior can be better than his ground behavior, though the ground behavior is improving. One biggie–early on he would rebel by bulging his shoulder and trying to push into me. That behavior is long gone, thankfully.

He is a smart horse and learns quickly. Unlike Mocha he doesn’t do well with repetitive drilling. And since I don’t have the show horse pressures, I’ve been taking my time with him. He likes the fox trot gait and will hold it easily without needing to be cued for quite a distance, even up steep uphills. He doesn’t have the body bracing that Mocha did from early days even in the snaffle. Putting him in the curb was a non-event, probably because I’ve been developing indirect rein in the snaffle so he pretty much neck reins without a lot of drama. We’ll be transitioning to a single curb rein and only using snaffle and curb when schooling soon. Once the ground gets softer we’ll go back to schooling canter, which seems to be an issue with him.

His biggest issues are mouthiness (I suspect again that this is a factor of age) and dropping his–ahem–male appendage at the end of a ride. I think he sees it as a game so I’m taking measures to make it less enjoyable. Because he’s very treat-motivated, if he drops, he doesn’t get a treat. Plus instead of capering in a circle around me, I’m making him back up. That’s not fun.

But. He is a bold horse when riding out, especially with more exposure. At first he was worried about seeing road equipment, but now he wants to go inspect it whenever we see a parked one (Mocha always was suspicious and snorty). If something worries him, I can talk him through it. He’s a fun horse to ride on the gravel roads and that smooth gait of his is so nice.

A good horse for my senior years.

It’s a book birthday! The Cost of Power: Return is out today, both in ebook and in paperback through Ingram Spark. I haven’t set up the paperback link in Bookshop yet, because my experience has shown that I need to give the listing about 48 hours after it clears at Ingram before Bookshop will pick it up.

The Cost of Power is a trilogy. Books two and three will be releasing in September, plus an omnibus ebook-only edition in November (though I might bite the bullet and see if anyone wants the whole saga in one book…at around 270,000-some words, though, it will be expensive). So yes, the series is complete and you’ll have the whole thing in your hands soon. Book Two, Crucible, releases on September 10th and Book Three, Redemption, releases on September 24th.

I’m calling this trilogy a science fantasy NeoWestern. The science fantasy part is because it’s a mix of science fiction and fantasy elements; the NeoWestern is primarily based on the setting on a ranch in rural Eastern Oregon. There’s also minor tropes from classic Western stories–the bad banker and the corrupt sheriff, primarily. But there’s also wildfire sparked by an angry spirit, horses (of course, I try to get horses in everything I write), a nasty blizzard, and everyday life on a ranch. Plus main character Ruby is heavily into agricultural technology and designing her own nanobiobots to improve crop drought resistance as well as provide detailed feedback on what’s happening in the fields.

Power was one of those books that grew in the making (well, don’t they all, but some more than others). I originally wanted to examine the whole mind control programming issue I introduced in The Martiniere Legacy series, as well as the multiverse elements that emerged in the last book of that series, The Enduring Legacy. Then I started playing with the concept that in this universe, the primary villain of the other Martiniere books, Gabriel Martiniere’s father Philip, was as much a victim of mind control manipulation as his son was. Which meant there needed to be other villains. I pulled on a common trope from more literary Westerns, the bad banker, as a minor villain. Philip’s adopted son Joey turned into a bigger villain, but…there needed to be more. I had the Braun family and their Zingter Enterprises as corporate opponents, but…there needed to be more.

(There needs to be more seemed to be a consistent theme of this trilogy when I was drafting it!)

That’s when I realized I had unconsciously been thinking about La Chanson de Roland and the entire Carolingan mythos. Plus a dose of the Melusine of Lusignan mythos. The Martinieres have always been a cadet/illegitimate branch of the Valois French nobility, but I tied them directly into the Lusignans in this story. But I couldn’t have just one European water spirit floating around in this story. There had to be an opposing spirit, so…I brought in the Lorelei, who is the patron of the Braun family just as the Melusine is the patron of the Martinieres.

However, I also didn’t want this story to be all about European spirits. It is set in the Pacific Northwest, and Ruby, the female lead, has Native ancestry, albeit somewhat diluted. Ever since her great-great grandfather claimed the ranch, the Ryder family has made small offerings to the wild creatures of the Double R Ranch, very quietly and without any fanfare. That led to the subplot where Etienne Martiniere was a fur trapper in the Oregon Country, married a Native woman of Nez Perce/Cayuse affiliation, and left daughters in the country. He was tasked with protecting the Melusine and she found refuge with a Native spirit, Bear.

But that’s not all! We have digital thought clones, including malign ones. Lots of secrecy including the recent past history of Martiniere involvement in the MK-Ultra program, a feud between the leaders of the Martiniere and Braun family tied to that involvement, and more. One of the obstacles that protagonists Ruby and Gabe struggle with is the slow feed of information from the Melusine, Bear, and the digital thought clones about the impact of history on their current situation.

Then there’s the relationship between Ruby and Gabe which parallels their experiences in other universes. A betrayal in Book Two leads to disaster (hey, there’s a reason it’s titled Crucible) and recovering from that disaster is part of the story of Book Three, Redemption.

Ultimately, there is a cost to gaining power. Yes, Ruby and Gabe are powerful. But they pay a price for it, especially Gabe.

This is my last visit to the Martinieres but I wanted to end their saga with a bang.

I think I did.

Here are the links for Return. Click on your preferred ebook distributor to buy it.

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Sometimes you just can’t keep a good character down. Mike Martiniere sandbagged me when I wrote the first Martiniere Legacy books, appearing as the five-year-old clone of Philip Martiniere in Realization. He kept nagging at me until I wrote his own book, The Heritage of Michael Martiniere.

One thing that intrigued me was the thought of what it would be like to grow up as a clone. Mike is brought up on an isolated Eastern Oregon ranch, but he also spends time in places like Paris and Los Angeles as part of a wealthy, privileged, powerful family. He was originally created by his progenitor as a blood donor, though it later comes out that maybe, just maybe, his progenitor had notions of trying to possess Mike in order to achieve immortality. At the very least, Philip Martiniere in that universe viewed Mike as a source for spare parts.

All of this was based on choices as the author. I had Mike think of Philip Martiniere as his progenitor, because that seemed to be the best descriptive option, especially since Mike hates Philip’s guts for what was done to him before he was rescued from Philip’s clutches. In the climatic conclusion of Realization, Mike spits out defiance against Philip by threatening to bite him—the only weapon he had available as a five-year-old.

Mike is also subject to all the ailments of the man he was cloned from. That means osteoporosis at a young age, cardiac and lung problems, arthritis, and a lot of other issues. Not all cloning is like this—equine clones, for one, don’t seem to have the same issues that Dolly the sheep had. I went with the Dolly methodology because that made a better story.

His medical struggles make up a big part of Heritage. But it also deals with the malign influence of his progenitor, especially since Philip, although dead, manages to reappear as a digital thought clone. Philip is a rather nasty Big Bad with megalomaniac ambitions, and he had the money and power to try to implement them.

Which…brings us to multiverses and The Cost of Power.

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I didn’t originally set out to write a multiverse. However, in the last book of the main Martiniere Legacy series, Gabriel Martiniere, Philip’s son, starts speculating about what if. What might have been if…and the concept intrigued me. I wrote a couple of rather romantic books where one of the foundational premises of the Legacy changed.

Then I started getting other ideas, including the digital thought clones that popped up in Heritage and another book in the character-focused side series, People of the Martiniere Legacy. Things kept brewing, and I had the notion that digital thought clones could cross universes.

I had wanted to play further with the implications of mind control. That was the original concept of The Cost of Power. Then I decided it would also be interesting to look at a different version of Philip Martiniere. But what made things different? Well, that’s when the digital thought clones came in—digis. Then a bunch of other stuff that I’ll discuss another time.

Originally, a digital version of Gabe was going to be the dominant good guy digi. That got confusing, especially since Philip had an evil digi counterpart. Who else to bring in but Mike? The more I thought about Mike as the lead digi, especially in the later books, the more I liked it. Plus that allowed me to stage a confrontation between Mike and Philip. I thought there was more to Mike’s story than what shows up in Heritage, but there really wasn’t enough beyond that to write another book, until now.

So. Mike is the leader of the good digis as we move through The Cost of Power.

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Now this is the point where I slide into shameless self-promo. The Cost of Power trilogy releases in August and September. The first book, Return, comes out on August 20^th and it’s now up for preorder. As a preliminary, I’m running a sale on The Heritage of Michael Martiniere. $2.99 for the ebook at all ebook vendors, starting on July 15^th. So if you want to find out more about Mike’s background, check it out at the links below.

Stay tuned to find out more.

Heritage Book Links:

Books2read link

Amazon link

The Cost of Power: Return Book Links:

https://books2read.com/u/4EaEPe

Amazon link

One of the drawbacks of how my brain functions is that complex organizational schemes only last for a short period of time, generally. Some things remain relatively intact—my use of the 8 ½” x 11” Moleskine weekly planner, for one, which is just an extension of the complicated DayRunner scheme I used in the ‘90s—but others end up working for about six months.

I’ve tried both electronic and paper organizing methods and where things usually fall down is in the complexity of the system I devise. Last year’s attempt to do weekly/monthly assessments of the writing week, then blogging about it, just about wrecked me. Yes, it was supposed to be providing accountability.

No, it didn’t work.

What that method did was load about an hour’s worth of time-dependent extra work on me, more if you count the blogging piece. At the end, before I dropped doing it, I struggled with rising sensations of feeling overwhelmed and behind, racing along trying to keep up with my organizing structures rather than the organizing structures making things easier. Fewer things got done on my daily to-do list. I still needed to keep day and time-dependent reminders in my working memory. Not the best method for someone with ADHD issues.

Besides, the old method was too dependent upon paper tracking. Which is great if you can break down the tasks when first planning or scheduling, but if you need to add or subtract a task as your work on the primary task unfolds, then it becomes a time suck because you have to recreate the outlines on paper, juggle more 3×5 cards, or whatever to document the expansion. Not to speak of “where on earth is the outline for the more detailed breakdown of this task, damn it, I can’t find it now!”

It also seemed that I had more and more tasks coming my way where I had to go through “if this happens, then I need to take this step next.” But I didn’t always know what that next step would be until the task unfolded—deadlines, a step that needed to happen before I took the next action, etc, etc. An optimal organizing system required the ability to add subtask breakdown steps as part of my planning.

Having some sort of organization also became crucial because I’m juggling multiple volunteer responsibilities as well as preparing for a trilogy book launch this fall. Promotion has changed a lot over the past year and I needed to have some sort of organized strategy that worked for me. I looked at a book-oriented organizing program, but right off the bat it started giving me deadlines based on a slightly different sales model than the one I use. The promotion organizing program assumed I was using Kindle Unlimited and…I don’t sell well on KU, never have been able to get it to work for me. Examining things further it became clear that the program just wasn’t gonna work for me. Oh, I learned a little bit from it, but…it wasn’t the electronic organization I required for the book launch process.

More than that, I needed something to help coordinate my volunteer work.

An electronic planner seemed to be the answer—but was it?

Previous attempts to use electronic planners had failed because at the time I was trying to use them, the ability to nest those subtasks easily didn’t exist, much less being able to network my planner across devices. Oh, I could organize subtasks by date and time, but…arrrgh, it was simply frustrating because I couldn’t sort by specific organizations and major tasks. I got a taste of possibilities with Evernote, but alas, that ended up with issues in the long run. I forget what they were but they were enough for me to stop using the program.

I took a look at what came with my iPhone. One thing I wanted was the ability to go beyond simple calendar tracking. I already had that. I needed the ability to break up my assorted multistep tasks into separate lists. Ideally, it would show up not just on my phone but on my computer. Was there something?

Yes.

On the iPhone it’s called Reminders. I started poking at it and playing with it—aha. Works across devices. I could organize my to-dos by specific groups or tasks, into individual lists. But the program also brought together ALL of my lists that I could check with one screen on my phone. I could break individual to-dos into assorted subtasks so that step-by-step planning, complete with the date and time, could happen WITHOUT having to do a lot of workarounds and cobbling up strategies. It just…happened. Built into the app.

Even better, instead of being tied into extensive data entry on my phone, I could organize and do data entry on my computer. I’m not a heavy user of my phone for anything but the basics—don’t do email or social media on it, so I needed something that crossed devices.

Is it a perfect solution?

Not entirely. There are times when Reminders is a bit wonky.

However, I love being able to set up subtasks, add a date and time, then set times for when specific steps need to be completed. The lists work visually for me.

Plus there’s the satisfaction of tapping that little round button, and seeing the task go away.

Even more satisfying is the reduction of stress on my cognitive load. I don’t have all of my to-dos loaded on the app. Not all of them require that degree of complex tracking. But for the tasks that require that sort of tracking—I’m hopeful that this will make things easier, especially as my responsibilities pick up again during the fall, along with entering the drafting stage of a new book while promoting the new release.

We shall see how things go in the long run.

There’s been a lot of quiet progress on the equine front. Mocha and Marker moved to summer pasture in May. Mocha immediately began establishing her rule not just over Marker but the neighboring gelding, Blue. In past years, when it’s been just Mocha, Blue could get away with wandering off to his shed and ignoring Mocha when she called for him. She would come quickly when he called, but he didn’t necessarily respond when she called, which led to a lot of fretting and frustration on her part.

Things changed now that she has Her Own Gelding. I shut them in a smaller corner pasture because I wanted it to get grazed down first. Didn’t want to do it when Mocha was alone because she’d fret and fuss at not being near other horses. Marker hangs out with Mocha. She doesn’t need Blue for company, except when Marker leaves to go for a ride. She’s very attached to Marker now and calls both when he leaves and when he returns. In return, he hangs out with her and, while being pushy by nature, has become less so the longer he stays with her. If she’s pulled out, he fusses. There hasn’t been a lot of pinned ears, squealing, or popped-up hind end kicking threats from her, either. From past experience I know that if she’s unhappy with field partners I’d be seeing a lot of that behavior. Now, she moves into his space when I’m booting him up and saddling, anticipating shared cookies before I put her back in the field.

The pairing and the weather this year meant that I could rotate them between pasture sections, too, something we used to do with our horses when I was a kid. Unfortunately I think this week’s hot spell probably finished that management for the summer. They still have plenty to graze in that upper field for another week or two. But we shall see—depending on when the fall rains come, I might do it again.

She is having more issues with the steeper upper field, and some of the rocky paths she used to choose. However, Marker keeps her moving, more than she would if she was alone or with the mare herd. She is a stay in one place and graze type where he likes to move around while grazing. But she still trots and canters quite a bit. It’s good to see, and she’s putting weight on while still maintaining muscle.

Marker’s come quite a ways this summer. I took him to our first big event together at the end of June, the Ranch Rodeo trail ride that winds its way through Joseph and up to the top of the moraine. He had to handle being around 40-50 horses and mules; being in the front, middle, and end of the line; having a lot of horses moving in and out of his space; having stock dogs trotting behind him; and negotiating both town obstacles and rocky hillsides with a rider. Plus a big, wide ditch with water, about two feet deep.

He got a little worried when we were crowded going on our way out of town, but didn’t squeal, kick, or even pin his ears. Whenever he got nervous, I talked to him, then eventually circled back to put him in a less-crowded space. He did get worried about road markings (that bicycle path marker was eeevvvill, I tell you, EEEEVVILL) and cement retaining walls, but that was really the worst of it. We had a couple of slippery moments with his boots going downhill, but he cooperated with me and we did fine. Boy horse has that invisible fifth leg to catch himself that Mocha didn’t. She opted for precision and slow placement in those situations, while he marches through. But he’s a bigger horse so that makes a difference.

By the time we rode down Joseph’s Main Street, he was DONE, however. Not being a jerk or spooky, just letting me know by the speed of his pace and his overall behavior that he had gone through enough. He was a good boy as we rode near the head of the line through town, and whinnied at his trailer when we came within sight of it. I don’t know if he expected Mocha to be in it or if he was just happy to see the trailer.

Another thing that’s happening is that he is apparently gaited. I don’t know if this is natural or something I’ve done—I got Mocha to do much the same thing on the road, except that it didn’t feel as natural for her as it does him. Don’t ask me what gait it is that he’s doing—it covers ground nicely on the roads, is very comfortable and smooth, and eats up the miles. Might be singlefoot; might be running walk. Or even an amble. That points to a likely Morgan background in addition to the Arabian because while Quarter Horses do have some gaiting in them, it’s not as common as it is in Morgans. It’s easy enough to feel why horses with that sort of gait were prized back in the day when horseback riding was a dominant transportation mode.

Or it could be me—my first horse mentor, Carol Suit, got just about every horse that passed through her hands to gait. I was too young to realize that was a good skill to develop but I must have picked it up somewhere.

In any case, we’re making progress in horse world. I can direct Marker somewhat with hand signals and the use of the lunge whip as a guide. I can open the wire gate, tell him back and whoa, and he stays there until I halter him. He still gets anxious and pushy after I’ve been gone a day or two, but even that is improving.

Progress in small steps.

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Over the past few days I’ve been working my way through nearly a thousand pages of manuscript to whip The Cost of Power into some sort of continuity shape. After running all three books through a line edit, my next step was to sit down with paper and a felt-tipped pen to create a rough scene matrix intended to help me identify holes in the story as well as places where I contradict myself. I addressed some issues in the line edit pass, but this is laying the foundation for the big revision.

After two years of working on this trilogy, I needed to do this intensive review to get all of the pieces into my head as a coherent whole.

I’ve used this tool before, primarily when working with more than two points-of-view in books with a complicated geography. The last two books of The Netwalk Sequence required this treatment because not only were there four character viewpoints, but the characters were scattered across the Earth and in space. The same was true for the last two books of Goddess’s Honor, except in that case I was coordinating magical battles across two continents, plus dealing with less technological means of transportation.

The matrix this time wasn’t as complicated as either of those series, thankfully, just longer because it covers three books for nearly a thousand pages total. I only had two POVs to coordinate, and distance wasn’t a factor. So I didn’t need to figure out where everyone was in each scene and whether offstage characters were doing something important that needed to be covered.

For The Cost of Power, the biggest reason for resorting to the scene matrix (besides length and time spent writing it) was that the last third of the third book came up with some big surprises that needed to be addressed earlier in the trilogy. Otherwise these ending events read like a deus ex machina and that doesn’t work. They’re also the sort of worldbuilding pieces that enrich and deepen the story. I needed to identify holes in the story, plus figure out where to put this backstory earlier in the trilogy.

Is it going to make the trilogy significantly longer? Not really. For one thing, during the line edit pass, I got rather aggressive about cutting words. Those first drafts had a lot of repetition in them. For another, in this pass, the scene matrix identified spots where the characters were just blathering. It was interesting blather, but it didn’t advance the story or give much depth to the characters or the world.

Which is one reason why I really like using a scene matrix to analyze a book in revisions. All I needed to do was identify pages, characters in the scene, scene events, and scene purpose/notes (which became more notes than purpose as I worked through the piles of paper). Unlike Netwalk or Goddess’s Honor, I didn’t need to figure out what the other characters were doing and where they were.

I also sat down and ran through a book a day, rather than taking this step slowly. Why? Well, I wanted the entire trilogy in my head, as I mentioned above. Because I’d just done the line edit of all three books, I still remembered mental notes I had made about things I needed to consider during the scene matrix creation.

It’s not quite time to dive into the rewrite, though. I have to make further notes about several issues I flagged as backstory that I need to flesh out, as well as figure out where I need to insert the backstory or fix holes that need me to create the framework for fixing them.

But at least this step is done. My arthritic thumb is swollen and a little achy, but that’s gotten better as I worked. I have ink stains from the old and failing felt-tipped pens I used to create the scene matrix—better to use felt-tips for long periods of handwriting than ball points, as I’ve sadly discovered. Even if the felt-tipped pens are messy and I can only write on one side of a sheet of paper due to bleedthrough. I have a lot of spirals hanging around still (leftovers from abandoned student spirals that I just pulled out sheets that had been written on and saved the clean paper).

I have no freaking idea if this story will sell at all, or if it just turns out to be a trilogy of the heart. Nonetheless, I’m committed to making it the best damn trilogy I can. It’s the conclusion of the Martiniere Saga, even though I do leave myself an opening to possibly write something about the next generation. Though I don’t think that will happen. As I’m learning from wrestling with the concept of the sequel series to Goddess’s Honor, even if there’s a possibility that the stories can go on…that doesn’t mean they necessarily will.

Onward.

Note: I seem to be on a blogging roll of late. Soon enough I’ll be slowing down, but it appears that I apparently am able to get back to posting again.

Meanwhile, don’t forget, if you like what you read, you can buy me a coffee here.