Shit happens, but often to guide us to the good

I've been quiet on my blog because so much has been happening that I feel like I've switched off a few of my normal "feelers" that go out to the world, just to deal.

Everything that's happened to me is the answer to something I've asked for, directly or in intention, although the form it's come in has often been stressful.

I have tried to make life work in Brazil for almost four years. I only realized how much I wanted to leave when my husband received notice that he was being sued two months ago. A man who worked for us during our first year here got sick, stopped working, and a year later died. Even though he'd had this same sickness before he started working for us, the lawsuit alleged that my husband was responsible for his death because it was connected to working with pesticides, and it asked for us to support his wife and children for the next 50 years or so with a total of 700,000 reais. What happened at the first court date, though, was the woman suing us didn't show up, and the case was dismissed after her lawyer couldn't show proof that she was sick.

The date has passed now for the case to be reopened. Her lawyer can start the whole process again at any time, but we suspect that the woman, who is married again to a man with a job and is also receiving her late husband's salary from the government for the rest of her life, probably had little to do with starting the lawsuit, since she doesn't need money--and since no one knows better than she does the truth of her husband's sickness and how long he had it. It was probably the idea of her brother, who saw the chance for a quick cash settlement, and who did show up to court that day.

Anyway, although nothing is certain, I feel cautiously optimistic that this case won't rear its ugly head again. But its effects on me have still been huge--it's broken the camel's back and there's no turning back now from my return to the US, about which I'm very happy. I'm leaving next week and soon after that will investigate the new city I have in mind to move to. YAY!

The other thing that's happened demonstrating how shit can help guide us toward the good is that I finally found a home for my novel, A Tale of a Schizophrenic Kingdom. It'll be published by Senzuri Books. I started a page for it up above which I'll fill in later.

So the shit took the form of 40+ rejections I received from various agents, pitch sessions, and publishers. But I only realized about a month ago that I had made quite an enormous mistake in my querying--I had attempted to pigeonhole my book into the wrong genre, and I was choosing agents and publishers based on that genre, and querying it as if it were. I'm not really sure how I could have been clueless for so long, but I guess writing a first novel has a huge learning curve...I tried to present it as "epic fantasy," "high fantasy," "romantic fantasy," "fantasy with romantic elements," or "romance with fantasy elements." When actually it's not even commercial, not genre fiction at all. It's more what they call "literary fantasy" or "magical realism." Now some people think that all it means when you tack "literary" onto a book is "not at all marketable" or "those painful things you have to read in high school" or "best consigned to dust heap". But I'll just smile and say "niche audience." :)

(I also made the very typical mistake of querying far too early, before the manuscript was ready and before both ms & query letter had gone by the critique partner I got a few months ago. I'm not sure if it's a bigger mistake to target the wrong people or to have an unpolished ms but both together weren't much of a winning combination.)

Anyway, I finally corrected the mistake in my query and identified three small publishers with attractive books whose subjects were not too serious and were eclectic enough that mine would fit in. Two weeks later, the one I liked best responded with my very first acceptance. YAY!

Reflections on the A to Z Challenge

My theme this year was "Dreaming from A-Z," and I thought about things beginning with the appropriate letter and then posted about the dream the next day.

I didn't remember my dreams every day, and I also knew I'd be traveling the first two weeks of April. So I started a few weeks early and at times had to do the same letter three nights in a row before I remembered something.

I'd been hoping to have a couple of lucid dreams during the month, those kinds when you know you're dreaming and can do whatever you want--since the first step to that is always to focus on remembering your dreams. Unfortunately I had none of those, but I do think my dreaming space has changed some over time--I noticed that this kind of grayish unpleasant tone that I've associated with dreaming for many years is gone, so now unless it's an anxiety dream, most of them are fairly neutral, sometimes enjoyable. Supposedly the next step toward lucid dreaming is, before you sleep, keep thinking "I am dreaming" because if you manage to say that while you're dreaming, you'll enter a lucid state. I've only had two or three before in my life and I only recall being either hedonistic or violent...trying to have sex with people I always wanted to have sex with, or beating up monsters. I guess after the hedonistic stage passes you can start doing some really cool things out on the astral.

Anyway, even without lucidity, the dreams just keep coming every night...it's sort of nice because I'm still stuck in rural Brazil and leave the house so seldom, but I've got a set of memories of other things I've done every day far beyond in another dimension.

Dreaming from A-Z: Day Z

For my A-Z Challenge I'm thinking about something beginning with each letter the night before my post, and then I'm writing about my dreams.

I'm so happy to finally have reached Z!!!! I tried to end with a super deep, significant dream, by imagining climbing up a ziggurat to some great truth on the top. (and I get to reuse my ziggurat picture from last year's challenge, yeeha!)

Unfortunately, all I dreamed about was eating at a restaurant and then putting on a lot of cosmetics and then a blond wig. I looked only a little bit strange.

So I've racked my brains and can't come up with any sort of deep interpretation of this dream. I don't care though cuz I'm done with the challenge!!!

Dreaming from A-Z: Day Y

For my A-Z Challenge I'm thinking about something beginning with each letter the night before my post, and then I'm writing about my dreams.

I settled on imagining a giant yellow yeti running around and yelling. I created an animated scene in my head based on my yeti from last year's challenge. Sadly, he didn't show up in my dreams, but now I know better than to imagine giant monsters of any sort before bed because I did spend some of my astral time being chased.

I had a bunch of dreams I don't remember--I wrote down a few words but then I kept dreaming that I wrote down the rest and woke up to find all of that forgotten, and unwritten. *sigh* So here's what I do have based on my few scribbles:

I'm in a house and am having a hard time getting the door to lock. Every time I turn away from it, it swings back open. When I go to lock it again, a mannish woman comes in and I know she’s a vampire or zombie who wants to bite me. I’m totally torn about whether my chances are better if I flee or if I kill her and lock myself back inside the house. I'm so preoccupied with the decision that the dream changes and I'm in another one.

I give a sad kitten doll a replacement ribbon, using a gauzy lavender one with a bell strung on it instead of the pink ribbon she lost. This makes its owner, my sister, happy.

Dreaming from A-Z: Day X

For my A-Z Challenge I'm thinking about something beginning with each letter the night before my post, and then I'm writing about my dreams.

X offers a pretty limited selection of themes for stimulating dreams. I chose to think about my favorite X-men from the movies. Although I thought Michael Fassbender was pretty hot as Magneto in First Class, hands down my favorite X-man is Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. I can sort of see why he would be the object of a stalker throwing a pubic-hair-filled razor at him, because his character is just so brooding and intense and unfulfilled--it could easily feed a crazed complex that one could be just the person to nurture him...perhaps to shave him...

So I dreamed that I just discovered that my parents weren't my birth parents--I'd been given up as a baby. I felt betrayed by my birth parents and wondered why they didn't want me. (just like Wolverine, in that he was always seeking his past.)

I spent the rest of  my dreams feeling really angry with my parents. My dad walked in on me while I was sitting on the toilet taking a crap and he didn't even notice, continued talking at me about something irritating. I started yelling at him and continued even after I was done in the bathroom. 

Next part of the dream, I was cleaning out some boxes and I kept a bunch of thin yarn, thinking to make a doll. It was going to be a blue doll. 

Another dream-fragment, and here's the main Wolverine part: a very, very hairy man lay on a table asking if his back hair was going to grow in gray. I tell him it'll be black. My dad, with whom I'm still angry from the earlier dream, tells him he should laser it all off. I want to disagree, but the man really is abnormally hairy—it’s like fluffy dark moss on his chest.

Dreaming from A-Z: Day W

For my A-Z Challenge I'm thinking about something beginning with each letter the night before my post, and then I'm writing about my dreams.

I thought about "water" for W.

Dreams:

My husband's parents are going to a party in town. I have a prior engagement.  Something good, maybe to do with a guy.

But instead I’m going to dinner with my niece-in-law Ana. She orders a lot of food. I eat a piece of cake that looks like lemon meringue. The waitress forgets most of Ana’s order.  Ana wants some cake and I divide it, trying to give her half of the original size, but ending up taking a bigger piece so I get way more than half. I only feel slightly guilty as I eat it all.

My conversation with Ana is kind of stilted.

When the waitress comes, I tell her she forgot parts of the order. I think maybe Ana doesn’t want to eat any more but she says she does still want her order. She opens the menu and begins pointing out dresses she wants to buy. The waitress and I exchange conspiratorial smiles, because Ana’s just a typical girl. I suggest she try the dresses on first and she says she’ll go down to the store. I say I’ll meet her there.Then I start pillaging her leftovers and see there’s tons of good food left. I stuff my face with shrimp sushi. Then I find meatballs and two huge pizza-like creations with braided, slightly wet bread for the crusts. I fold one and put it in my bag and take more shrimp sushi that’s falling apart in my hands.

I see three boxes of other people’s leftovers on the floor, and I think of taking them but regretfully leave them.

Then I’m the last person in the restaurant and a waiter is turning off the lights as I descend. Downstairs, Ana is already gone—my dad arrived and they both left without me because I wasn’t there. But my friend Valentine, in the dream nicknamed “Blue,” is coming to pick me up so I’m not worried.

Dreaming from A-Z: Day V

For my A-Z Challenge I'm thinking about something beginning with each letter the night before my post, and then I'm writing about my dreams.

I don't know why but I've gone into dream-memory remission for the past few days (because I'm still pre-writing posts, but am rapidly catching up to the day I write them real-time) and haven't remembered any at all. I tried thinking of vampires one night, particularly Vlad from Lexx. The next night I thought about the astrological sign Virgo. And then last night I just thought about how I was very very very stuck.

Anyway, I have just two dream-fragments I've remembered:

- Seeing my friend Claire wearing black leather bondage pants--with criss-crossed straps on the calves so they gave the appearance of mesh. In real life Claire would never wear these pants--I only ever see her in yoga pants. In the dream, Claire also looked a few sizes larger on bottom than she is in real life, and I remember feeling a little alarmed because I was thinking that since my butt is larger than Claire's, I must look even bigger than I thought I did in my self-perception.

- Being in a library and hearing the loudspeaker announcing this man's late books that he had to turn in. I perused books and this series caught my eye, a Harlequin-type about ethnic princesses' stories of romance. One cover had a princess in some puffy harem pants throwing a hissy fit.

Whew, done with V, thank goodness.