Rachael

It crossed my mind that you might not have seen the best music video ever. Somehow, I had missed seeing it, and I'm not sure how that happened. I liked the song a lot when it came out — I liked its drive and homage to Queen (with its surprising lack of irony; I'm not even sure that homage the is intentional). But when my sister Bethany showed me this recently, saying it was the best video ever, I was dubious. We Herrons are exaggerators. Makes life fun, you know.

BUT IT IS. When thinking about conflict, both internal and external, and character motivation, and OMG THE ROMANCE plus hand to hand combat? Martha Flynn, who knows from this kind of thing, will have to agree, this is the best music video ever:

I suggest clicking over to YouTube and watching full screen, volume up. The picture quality ain't great, but oh, man. I have a theory that Muse formed their band solely for the purpose of writing this song so that they could make this video in order to be holograms within it. I'm not even joking the slightest bit. 

(Oh, how fun: High quality version (and explicit!) can be found at the director's website. Sweet.)

Eva V! She wins the copy of How to Sew a Button! Huzzah! In January, I'll have another goodie (I think it'll be another ARC of my book with a few extra goodies, so stick around).

But in the meantime, go see how Susan Gibberman, Librarian Extraordinaire does her research. (I love this. She's rad.)

THIS IS VERY EXCITING!

I have the coolest giveaway this month. Have you seen this book?

How to Sew a Button: And Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew

Erin is DARLING, and I love her site, and I think Erin's book and my book would be friends in the bookstore. How to Sew a Button and How to Knit a Love Song. Okay, so they're shelved pretty far apart, but I think at some point, they'll end up together. Maybe on an endcap in the bookstore called Really Great Titles We Think You'll Love.

Anyway, she's giving me one! To give to you! All you have to do is sign up to be on my mailing list! I haven't even sent one of those bad boys out yet, so you'll notice I don't spam (or share names, never fear). If you're already on the list, you're automatically in the drawing. (If you're not sure, you can double check by re-signing up — it'll let you know.) 

I'll do the drawing on Thursday, so that if you sadly do not win, you can still order your copies in time to give them to friends for Christmas (because honestly, how great is this book?). And how cute is Erin?

(Disclaimer: I did not know Erin before Twitter. But I claim her as a Twitter-friend now, so I will pimp her book. God bless Twitter, amen.)

ALSO, in fun news:

My book has been picked as a Night Owl Top Pick, AND my release date has been moved up to March 2nd, which you would already know, if you had preordered my book at Amazon. Of course, you might be planning on supporting your local independent book retailer. Yay! (But preorder online sales can be very good for me. I'm just saying. And I'm available for preorder now. Or you can shop IndieBound for a local store near you! That is all.)

And now I'm going Christmas shopping online. I refuse to leave the house today if I can help it. Mwah!

I just noticed, using Google Analytics*, that someone came to my site searching for the term "how to unfelt a sweater."

Oh, poor thing. You unfelt felted sweaters the same way you darn your handmade socks when they get a hole (courtesy, of course, of the Yarn Harlot): You hold them over the trash can and then drop them in, saying, "Darn." (You can stretch them out a little, but a good felted sweater? It's toast. Or good for your eight-year old neighbor.) And we've ALL been there. (I hope you didn't knit it yourself. I hate it when I do that. And I've done it.)

We had a great Thanksgiving, with a surprise sit-down meal for ten (plus nephew Isaac, who at five months old didn't quite require a chair, but made that eleventh nicely) that no one really saw coming. I mean, we saw the food coming–cooking happened all day long. But somehow I thought we'd just roam the house, food in our fists, so when we actually put two tables together and rounded up enough chairs, it was really quite spectacular. And delightful.

 
And now, I have a few more days off to continue digesting. Thank god. And knitting continues. I like this time of year SO much.

*That Google Analytics, I like it. I am a Google Girl, that's for sure. All hail the Church of Google. Google Wave? I am not convinced I need it, but I'M GLAD I HAVE IT because it has Google in the title. That is all.

I went to the coast for a couple of days, to be alone, to work on edits for my second book. I got the manuscript back from my editor, and I wanted to to have quiet, to just sit and think. I love editing. This was going to be great.

I thought it was a romantic idea. Go to a lighthouse hostel on the beach. Lala asked me if I was running away from home, and I said "No," but I was, really– not from her certainly (LEAST of all from her), not from anything in particular — just from life.

Then, when I was actually leaving, I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay home and watch TV and do ANYTHING to avoid work. I was having a blue day. I had no interest in being romantic or learning anything new about my manuscript, its plot, or its characters. I wanted to kick my heels on the floor and stay put.

But I went anyway. And it was amazing.

This was, literally, the view from my room at the Pigeon Point Hostel. Yes, it's a hostel, so my private room was small, without a desk (whoops, hadn't thought that one through), and I shared a bathroom with the male dorm (not bad, considering). My room was Dolphin 1, but it would be worth knowing that the dorms are not co-ed at this hostel, and in the Dolphin building, at least, the female dorm room has its own bathroom. The woman in that dorm had the whole 6-bed dorm to herself one night, with its own private bath, for cheaper than my private room with shared bath. Might be worth the risk….

And now to be completely self-indulgent in the photo department:

Me, at the end of the walkway, near the hot tub that overlooked the ocean (which I used one moonlit night with two very nice older ladies (because the hostel doesn't allow people in alone and the women took pity on me and let me come in with them during their time) who expressed surprise that I would even consider wearing a swimsuit — they hadn't owned a swimsuit for years, darling).

Walkway

View of the hostel from behind the pumpkin fields.

 

From the other direction, with iceplant.

 

My building, Dolphin.

The very nice common area, deserted during the day, perfect for doing work.

Nicely appointed kitchen. One night some women made chicken, which smelled divine.

 

My work, spread out. What's the view on the other side of that window, you ask? Oh, just this:

Can you IMAGINE?

And this was my favorite, VERY favorite part. Wait, I'm going to pour myself a glass of wine and then come back to the computer to type this out, because I'm going to enjoy telling you so much. 

Okay, I'm back. Last night (was it only last night? Wow), I noticed the sun was dropping quickly, and I was happy with the great progress I'd made on the manuscript, and I was ready to take a break. A brisk walk, I thought! Perfect! I left the hostel, and walked up the silent road along the shore.

A half-mile north of the hostel, I came upon a completely deserted beach.

Now, I'm a California girl who's lived in the islands. I've seen approximately eleventy bajillion sunsets over the oceans and various assorted seas. Each one is amazing and I love them all.

But this one was something else. I can't tell you how BIG it felt and how small I was, and how perfectly happy I was to be right there with that shore and sunset and surf. So please, click for embiggening if you'd like to, or just skip all the nature shots. They mean a lot to me, though. Silly cell-phone photos. God, I adore them.

 

And here's the sequence that gets me. Right as the sun was about to dip down for the last time, I decided to hole up and really watch. Really concentrate. I wanted to put the cell phone down and stop clicking photos and be present.

So I found a little sandstone indentation in the cliff wall, and nestled in. I looked right and this is what I saw:

I looked left to see this:

Looking forward, the sunset was right in front of me (and not captured well, but you get the gist):

Turning the camera back on myself:

Then I put my phone in my pocket and watched the SLOWEST sunset I've ever seen. It was unimpeded by any fog, or any cloud. In my (albeit terrible) memory, I don't remember a sunset like that, with nothing getting in the way on the horizon. Usually there's that little part at the end, where the sun is refracted into little bits and jumps around, and dives, and comes back up as it's mirrored by clouds and tricks of fog. But last night? It just sank, slowly, slowly, until it melted away, and it took forever to completely disappear. A line of pelicans flew over the last sliver of light, just before it was covered by the water, as if the birds were going to try to lift it back out. 

It was incredible.

Then I walked back to the hostel. Oh, best hostel.

Today, I did more tide-pooling before coming home:

I did not fall in. Thank god.

I LOVE TIDE-POOLS.

 

I also love olallieberry pie at Duarte's in Pescadero, just five minutes away from the hostel, and I love how it is only an hour from home. One hour. And wicked cheap. I'm thinking this should happen again when I need to get serious work done.

But I'm really looking forward to seeing Lala tonight.