A truly AMAZING week

On the eve of TRW as well as the eve of my beach weekend with my loving husband, I must report the following extremely cool things that have happened this week.
1. I entered Amy Gesenhues' very first blog contest ever, and I won!
2. I entered Gretchen McNeil's "Possess" ARCs contest, and I won!
3. Erin Reel"s (The Lit Coach), interview about my Empress Chronicles blog is up!
4. My buddy Cheryl Strayed is reading The Empress Chronicles manuscript and mentioned it in her recent interview, posted here!

So what do you think, blog friends, should I head down to 7-Eleven for lottery tickets?

teapunk: the long dark teatime of the soul

I've written a book that doesn't fit all that neatly into any particular classification beyond young adult. THE EMPRESS CHRONICLES is part romance, part historical, part contemporary-issue, part mystery, part urban fantasy, part magical realism, part steampunk. Actually, what it might be more than anything is a modern fairy tale. But, there is a mood that I want to encapsulate with some sort of distilling and overarching word or group of words.

At my day job, this would be the perfect opportunity for a branding exercise we call a 360. Essentially, in our 360s, clients and their trusted advisers gather in a room, and, following an agenda, we trot the clients through a brainstorming session that results in clarity and goals and all sorts of cool stuff.

In lieu of a traditional 360, I did some poking around, and, Et Voilà, I found a curious emerging sub-genre known as teapunk. Conjuring a Victorian moodiness and a fantastical Alice and Wonderland element, teapunk celebrates tea culture with a nod to some of the Victorian stylization of steampunk. Some go as far to suggest teapunk is a wide embrace of 19th century culture generally.

But what I like most about teapunk, is the punk-- a hint of the contemporary part of the historical/contemporary duality. And, borrowing from the quick definition of steampunk (a genre that features anachronistic technology in the Victorian era), teapunk might be thought of as a genre that celebrates the mood of Victorian culture via interface with a contemporary perspective. Ok, I made that up. Maybe better would be to quote the facebook page (and I paraphrase): Take the SM out of steampunk and steep in the long dark teatime of the soul.

digital spring cleaning

Taxes? Check. The latest revision of my YA book? Check. Final disgorgement of huge bin 'o books husband set on my office floor? Check.

That's three major left-brained and/or clear-headed activities concluded in the last 48 hours. I'm gonna confess something here. Linear organization is not my strong suit. Sometimes I stand in front of a big, fat mess of odd and jumbled items and my brain just fires off like a pinball in a special bonus round.

I have adopted any number of compensatory strategies for this, including, surrounding myself with pictures of order, e.g. my screensaver feature the perfect symmetry of the Viennese Medical School my father attended; even the twigs emanating from the twin naked elms that flank the central building are identical.

Whenever my hard drive crashes, after I get done throwing stuff, I'm secretly glad because of the tabula raza thing. I get a brand new start, with the hope that this time I'll create files that make sense. I'll not put the document with the kids' social security numbers in a file cryptically called "dugoutisms," for instance.

But today I decided not to wait for the next virus, and get rid of a bunch of crap on my computer, and I started with my Firefox bookmarks. I just deleted them all. I mean, what was I thinking, bookmarking "how to build a snake feeding box" two years ago. Like I'd need that info again? And, I'm planning on following it up with creating useful Twitter lists, rather than the catch all: lit stuff. I mean, pretty much everyone I follow has something to do with literature.

Writers, do you have crazy filing systems for your work? What are your compensatory strategies?

lost and found

Here's a good story.

About a year ago a writing acquaintance, Steve Arnt, called me up out of the blue to ask if I was missing a particular book from my shelf. I drew a blank, because I have several hundred books: some on shelves, some in boxes, some in tubs.

He'd been looking for an out-of-print book by a writer named Peter Christopher. The book was called Campfires of the Dead, put out by Knopf in 1989.

"Yes, yes," I said. "I know that book. I have that book. I knew Peter."

"You certainly did have that book," he said. "It's inscribed to a Suzy V. That has to be you."

I was in Hawaii when I got the call, on a deeply-anticipated holiday, one my husband and I had planned for over a year. We didn't know when we planned the trip that our house would be on the market, and, in particular, that our house would be on the market with a flooded basement, and that we would need to retroactively permit an addition put on illegally by my ex-husband years earlier.

Why all of this is important to the story is, about a month before our trip, during staging and dismembering hell, in the worst real estate market in two decades, my current husband and I hauled three truckloads of "yours, mine and ours" crap from the basement. Lots of it mildewed, moistened, stinky and ruined. But some of it merely heavy and cumbersome.

What I'm getting at is that Pete's book, the one you see in the picture with the very personal, lovely inscription, was a casualty of the dysfunctional triage. Where did Steve Arnt find it? Goodwill.

Now, I've done a lot of stupid, irresponsible things in my life. Once, I left my four-year-old daughter locked in the car while I ran into a coffee shop for an espresso. A cop was at the car's window when I returned, two seconds from hauling me to some sort of bad parenting jail. Back in college, I often swam naked in a local reservoir, and often there were drugs involved, or alcohol, or both. I was a poor swimmer and prone, at that time, to anxiety attacks. Drowning was a real possibility. And I won't even go into all the usual post-adolescent hyjinks. But being careless with something as sacred as a rare book--a rare, personally inscribed book at that, is inexcusably egregious.

So anyway, what happened next was, I conveyed my embarrassment and thanked Steve, who had called me so he could return my book, finished my holiday, sold the house, moved into a new house, and failed to follow up with Steve about my Campfires of the Dead.

But last week, at Lidia Yuknavitch's Powell's reading, there, sitting full-faced across the room, was Steve. And guess what? He still, after a year, was eager to return the book to me. So, we met for coffee, and there, on the cafe table, was Pete's book, not one bit mildewed, water-logged or otherwise ruined. And I'd forgotten how lovely the inscription was, and how it referred to a particularly glorious summer in 1993 when I'd met him on the Oregon Coast during a writing workshop given by Tom Spanbauer, and that I had continually dropped food on my feet while we shared writing and nuthorns and laughs.

wherever you go...

So, I'm here, in my cinder block cell. Unpacked and ready to tackle the empress, and who should show up but my ex-husband and my son, who were in town for the day.

Oh, the irony, right? The one week without Carson, instead of staying home the whole time and barricading myself in my office, I drive 160 miles to this motel and I'm here 5 minutes before turning into "mom."

But here's the thing. If he hadn't shown up, I would have spent the first hour talking to him on the phone and wondering if he's bathed (he has a broken arm, so hygiene actually is a challenge), or done his math the right way, etc. To spare me dark fantasies of doom, he came tumbling forth, backpack, filth and all, so I could administer my "mom" tools, and send him packing down the road.

So now, I have no excuse. There's nobody watching basketball within earshot, I've had my microwaved soup, and there will be no whiskey until I've worked through three more chapters.

Tune in tomorrow--for now, I'm leaving the Internet! (Well, unless I need to do manuscript-related research or something...)

writing retreats. in the real world.

So I've never been to Yaddo or one of those places where writers sequester themselves all day and have baskets of lunch left outside their doors seemingly by elves.

I've never scuttled off, by myself, to an island or the woods or a ranch hundreds of miles from nowhere--though I do often vacation in those sorts of places with my family.

When I do go off on a solitary writing retreat, I prefer cheap motels. Typically, I book the largest room in the least expensive motel I can find. Space is important because I like to spread my work out on the floor, on my bed, on the couch, indeed, on any horizontal surface. I bring my printer, my research material, the latest printed draft, my notes, several of my favorite books, my thesaurus and my ten pound American Heritage Dictionary. My only requirements are free wi-fi and a bathtub.

I like the motel to be walking distance from a park and a bustling downtown area where I can walk for my morning coffee and nightly martini.

This coming week I have such an expedition planned. I head off to Bend on Thursday with three days' worth of supplies and all the aforementioned paraphernalia. Amid the myriad resorts and bed and breakfasts I'm staying at the EconoLodge where I've booked a suite, and I feel mighty smug about it all.

Writers, what's your dream retreat?

interface

Greetings, from the airport affiliated with one of the happiest places on earth. Really!

After five days at Disney World, I'm sane, rested, re calibrated and sufficiently dosed up on my Vitamin D. With an 11 yr old boy as the only kid in our party, there was no need to stand in insufferably long character lines, no Princess makeovers, no It's a Small World. Only had to do Dumbo once. And the teacups, just to make sure they still make me nauseous. Yup. Check. Onward.

Here at "The World," they have four significant parks, the best of which, imho, is Animal Kingdom. Shady lanes, zoo animals in convincing habitats and the usual Disney hyper attention to filth.

Yes, there's excess. Yes, there's bad-to-mediocre food for high prices, yes there's over-stim bordering on the ridiculous. They try to squeeze every penny out of you.

And yet.

In five days not only did I not swear (except for once when my computer bag toppled over), but I didn't hear anyone else swear, either. People were ultra-polite, friendly. Happy. The weather was perfect, perfect, perfect. We went to the Disney Cirque du Soleil (La Nouba), and if it wasn't the greatest show on earth, it was damn close. (Of particular acclaim were a troupe of little Chinese girls in an act called Diabolos. Breathtaking!)

So here we are, at the Orlando airport waiting for our flight home. While here I spent a bit of time with my Empress notes and outlined some new plot shifts--really looking forward to tearing back into the manuscript next week. Rested, happy and if not tanned, at least not anemic looking.

Got style? Check it out!

Ever have those totally vortex days? Like you're in a dream and quicksand is involved, and you open your mouth to scream and nothing comes out?

I've been working and writing and living at a somewhat chaotic pace. Work is gangbusters, lots happening in the writing life, my brain loops and loops at bedtime and I dream about the to-do list and all the unfinished business therein.

But fuck it. I'm going to Disneyworld in a few days. Taking the husband and the kid and we're getting on a plane with our Florida outfits, our mouse passes, our maps and whatnot. It's been raining that cold, pelting stuff since Christmas, the back yard is a full sponge. My kid broke his arm the other day. All our vehicles have "issues." I may need root canal. We haven't finished our taxes. The list of "woe is us" goes on forever.

Ah, but there are some intense silver linings. The writers in workshop are going great guns. Books are out, being sold, hitting the bestseller list. Last week I signed with an agent, and she very promptly sent along revision notes on my manuscript. I can't wait to have at 'em. Really, I feel like my life is on steroids. It's all so amazing, sometimes.

That's why, on this very vague and stressed out day, I put the real world aside and worked on my platform. What is that, you ask? Well, here's the short answer. Steampunk. Although my book isn't dyed-in-the-wool Steampunk, there are some Victorian time-travel elements. There's a magical locket. A diary. An empress-to-be. Corsets, lots of corsets.

While writing my book, I grew fond of the "dreaming the future in the past" motif, so much so that, today, I put together a little quiz on Steampunk Style. I beseech you: if you have 3 minutes, take it and let me know if you were properly entertained!

edges

One of the top benefits of living a pastiche work life is that it lends itself to the unexpected. Now, granted, that's not everyone's cup of tea, but I'm all about the surprises. A couple of years ago one such serendipitous adventure flew into my window. An artist by the name of Ted Katz, whose art is featured to the left.

Ted was writing a book, and he was looking for an editor to help him organize his "are they essays? Stories? Where do I go with them?"

"Let me see what you've got," I said.

Ted loaded me up with his binders: pieces he'd written over the years, sketches, interspersed with his fabulous pictures. We met, mapped, meandered. He had a title: The Studio Within.

Ted has been painting and teaching in one form or another for 50 years or so, and in that time he'd amassed a portfolio and a vita that would be a lot for five men. The first time we met, he spoke about students who would be awe-struck upon seeing his current studio: a clean-well-lit, glorious space built onto the mid-century house he shares with his partner. This frustrated him. "Most of my work was created on a card table sectioned from my living space by a shower curtain," he said. And then, emphatically, pointing to his solar plexus: "It comes from here. This is where the studio is."

Now, nearly two years later, Ted has finished and published his book. The Studio Within is a collection of 40 lyrical pieces-- personal essays that venture into the heart of the artist's journey. It's funny, heartbreaking, full of voice and life, and most importantly, the essence of Ted.

Today, Ted invited me on his collector's tour--a preview of his upcoming show at Butters Gallery. The paintings he unveiled (the one pictured above is part of it), celebrate the theme "edges," and by way of introduction, Ted wrote a new essay that explores the relationship between a painting and its viewer. In the same way that his paintings "are responses to forms created by light and energy, and the edges formed by their noises and silences," the relationship formed between audience and picture is a response to a particular exchange of energy, much of it silent. Personal.

I love that Ted is acknowledging and calling out this temple within. It's one of the most wondrous qualities of humanity, the occasion to linger in the space where one thing meets another. Like the happy accident of meeting and working with Ted, the edge between the "you" and the "me" of art is as mysterious as is it mercurial, and summed up well by the conclusion of Ted's "edges" essay, a lovely quotation by William Carlos Williams:

"Unless there is a new mind there cannot be a new line, the old will go on repeating itself with recurring deadliness: without invention nothing lies under the witch-hazel bush."

writing in the "new world"

I'm a little late to pipe in on the Amanda Hocking buzz, but I really like what she has to say in this post (thank you, Erin Reel, for directing my scattered attention to it!)

What I like in particular is the demonstration of how a "lowly" writer now has the power to set the record straight with nary a phone call or magazine interface. Hocking has a half-million page views and nearly 1,000 followers on her blog, and a choir of tweeters crowing in her behalf. She's honed her audience through sheer will, hard work, and savvy.

That she's the latest poster child for self-pub success not-withstanding, Hocking isn't all that different than other women who set their sites on a goal and exploited their natural sourcing ability and intuition, backed up with a solid strategy. Mrs. Fields and her chocolate chip cookies, remember her? Mary Kay and her drive to turn housewives into entrepreneurs. Amanda Hocking had a vision, a skillset, and the drive to see it through, and while her nay-sayers are pounding out cautionary missives throughout the blogosphere, she's parlaying her success while being careful not to kill the kernel of passion that fuels it.

It's easy to get side-tracked with all the media at our fingertips. Easy to get sucked in to burning cycles and spending our writing energy in secondary pursuits. Talking about writing instead of writing. Ahem. I have well-published friends who never read their reviews because of the derailing factor. I have writer buddies who don't tweet, or facebook or blog, deciding instead to use their time at the keyboard to enter the alternate universe. Other friends of mine are good at compartmentalization, and segment their day and exposure to Internet noise judiciously.

As for me, I'm a binge type. I use the energy of distraction to propel me into my line of flight, and then, when it works the way I like, I can glide in the zone for hours. This tiny talent is what keeps me from being truly ADD, I think. It's a state of hyper-daydream. A high. But, alas, it's not available to me every day, I have to carve space for it. Put it on my Outlook calendar.

What about you? Are you a multi-tasker (have your creative writing doc open while attending to e-mail and social media), or do you do one thing at a time?

chelsea cain launches the night season

Last night my family and I popped over to Powell's Books to hear Chelsea Cain read from her newly released "The Night Season." Like any proud extended family midwife type, I marveled at her ability to convey the mixture of emotions, excitement, exhaustion and presence that accompanies the launch of a book. (Here she is signing the umpteenth book of the night with her daughter dutifully handing out the swag.)

This is the fourth book in the Gretchen Lowell-Archie Sheridan-Susan Ward series (formerly known as the "Heartsick" series), and oddly, it seems like just three weeks ago that Chelsea announced to our writing group, "I'm thinking of writing a cheesy thriller."

In a world overflowing with would-be novelists and cliches of folks who dream of best-selling authordom, her claim never left a doubt in our minds. Like many of the writers in our group, Chelsea has that extraordinary combination of intelligence, tenacity, talent and will. The quadruple storm of qualities that allows the publishing industry to persevere in the face of economic ruin, technological explosion and a generation of kids who often won't read anything longer than a tweet.

As she said on the podium last night when asked how long she planned on doing this, "Until nobody shows up at Powell's." In other words, forever.

cool distraction of the day!

I word-clouded my manuscript with Wordle and "like" wins, "one" is in second place, followed by most of the characters' names.

rereading your work via a new medium

I know that agents and editors have been reading manuscripts (or fulls, as they're now called, apparently) on some sort of e-reader for years, but writers? Not so much. That's all changing, of course, thanks to the ubiquitous nature of tablets, Nooks and Kindles. So, not wanting to be left in the electronic dust, I bellied up to my own Amazon email and sent myself my manuscript, pdf'd and formatted to single space.

This was a leap of faith for me, I must confess. My wafer-thin Kindle, whilst much easier to tote on the plane to Arizona yesterday, seems to resemble a "book" as much as does a stone tablet, or a message-in-a-bottle, even. But when I slipped it out of a slim pocket of my satchel and slid the power button to on, and saw my pages illuminated in front of me, I have to admit, I felt somewhat delighted.

But here's the real take-away. Reading my book in its e-form, brought a whole new layer of intake. Like a former mentor had suggested in his counsel to read a manuscript in a new environment to take advantage of the sensual stimulation that ensues and sharpens the editorial muscle, viewing THE EMPRESS CHRONICLES through the interface of an e-reader filtered my "seeing" of it through a slightly alternate neural pathway.

My notes revealed new edits, and my overall impression of the book took on a larger context somehow--one separated a tad more from that of the creator.

And another cool function--because the Kindle offers a percentage read, I can more easily diagnose structure and plot points. Pretty cool, actually.

plotting like you mean it

So tonight at workshop, after everyone was settled in with their whiskey and Xanax and whatnot, I passed out my pages. It was a troublesome plot-filled chapter of Empress, one that never quite did its job and I was open, really open, to having it eviscerated and fixed. A tummy tuck, maybe. A little light brain surgery.

My group came through, as they always do, with aces. Money stuff. A slew of concrete solutions. And then it was Chuck's turn, and he asked, "Why do we put dogs in a story?" (I had two in this particular chapter.)

I stumbled through some lame possibilities:

Because they're cute?

Comic relief?

Emotional fodder?

Wrong. Wrong and wrong.

"So we can kill them," he said.

Ah, (palm-to-forehead smack), of course! And in my particular case, by poisoning the spaniels, I'd be killing two dogs with one stone: raising the stakes by foreshadowing a bigger death, and ending the scene on action rather than conjecture. Always a better choice.

Can't wait to wake up tomorrow and poison the pooches!

homage to men. Yup, men.

Men. can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

Actually, I can more than live with men. Good men make it possible for me to do what I do best and know that the leaves will be raked, the oven fixed, the bathroom wallpaper scraped off and my car kept in good running order. Oh, and it was men who bailed me out of my pc virus debacle last week, and more men who introduced me to the wonders of Mac as backup. There's even a man doing my laundry right this very minute!

I love men! Here I am, scything through my social media obligations, my research, my e-missives and my work orders--none of which would be possible without the good old y chromosome.

Just thought I needed to get that off my br...um...chest.

will digital surpass print by 2014?

I read a report today claiming that by 2014 e-books would surpass print books. The numbers and stats and newsy-news about digital media is coming in faster that warp speed. If the typos and grammatical errors in the aforementioned piece are an indication of what might happen when the speed of publication becomes more important than the craft behind the content, we readers and writers are in for a cold water dunk.

I've been most interested in e-book outfits that seem to walk the careful road when it comes to digital pub, and I really like Jane Friedman's approach at Open Road. Open Road is creating a bridge between old sensibilities and new form, which I think is important for old-schoolers like myself. Now that some 10.5 m folks have e-readers, the door is open to a variety of approaches to get those readers' attention.

I also like the speculation that indie bookstores are getting a leg up as the big box guys go down, mostly because indies have always nurtured community and the digital landscape of social media has given them more tools, more ways to get the word out.

I still wish my Kindle weren't so freakin' ugly though.

chop kale, filter water: the midterm report

I'm more than halfway through. I have eight more days, to be exact. I'm already fantasizing the perfect post-cleanse first meal (like the Last Supper, but in reverse). Bagels and lox will be involved.

I've learned a bunch of crap about myself during this process, but the number one thing I learned? I have a facility for shortcuts. Okay, I'm lazy. If I have one fabulous talent, it's figuring out how to crawl really close to the edge of not doing something but still do it. If I were a Nike tagline I'd be, "Just fudge it."

Thank God I live in Portland, is all I have to say. The land of myriad health food stores, gluten-free start-ups, carts that serve raw food. I discovered a frozen bread yesterday that's made from rice flour and sunflower oil and sea salt. A salad dressing that's olive oil and organic blueberries and balsamic vinegar. A cafe with non-soy vegan soup. But still, I'm cleaning out the juicer, chopping the fennel, and soaking the raw cashews. In filtered water. For two hours.

Ok, the deets since last we spoke. Still the same on the tmi front. Mucus and other bodily unpleasantries continue to diminish. I feel lighter. I am lighter (7 or 8 pounds). And I no longer have the caffeine withdrawal headaches. And about four days ago my energy came back. Finally! Oh, and my blood pressure went down 10 diastolic points (and 20 systolic). I'm now "normal." Yay!

But I miss eating like a normal person. There, I said it. I miss stuffing chocolate in my face, sipping an espresso tinged with brown sugar, the chili-cheese fries at Meadows after a morning on the slopes. And don't get me started on how much I miss cocktails!

Okay, do get me started, because I need to confess my one big, fat "off the wagon" moment last Friday.

I had a glass of cabernet. One glass. And I stretched it out for 45 minutes, lingering in its warmth and embrace like a starved sailor does a whore. I noted all those hifalutin descriptors on fancy bottles of wine: crisp, earthy, fleshy, varietal, herbaceous, oaky, nervy, mid-palate, peak.

All was well until I started eyeing my son's hamburger. And his potato chips. And his Shirley Temple.

And the next morning I felt like total shit. Bloaty, head-achy, lardassy, all of that. I punished myself by cramming an entire bundle of lacinato kale down the juicer chute, and following it with a chaser of bok choy.

Yes, I know. This sounds very eating disorderish. I admit, I wonder about the psychological jostling that occurs with "cleanses" generally. Viewing most Western food as poison. The eschewing of this, that and the other. My husband keeps asking what I'm going to continue to avoid once I'm "clean." Probably dairy, if I had to pick one thing (there goes the bagel/lox thing, 'cause I'm not spreading hummus on it). I'll try to limit coffee. Less booze. Less bread. Less bacon. I've developed a fondness for fennel. I'm way more into carrots than ever before. But please, don't take away my chocolate on a permanent basis. I think a life without chocolate would be like walking around in a burlap sack.

Any of you have fucked up fad diet stories to share? Or even successful fad diet ones?

the life of a treasure hunter

In Erin Reel's Lit Coach blog today, there is a terrific interview with author Paula Reed. The theme is "artistic integrity" and the take-away from this post is: write what you love, and don't let predetermined ideas about displeasing editors and readers that may be beholden to your previous books interfere with writing the book that's calling out to you.

I love this advice, and I especially loved when Reed, who built her reputation on romance novels, says:
In the romance genre the main story must be a love story, and happily-ever-after is a non-negotiable element. Sometimes, though, it seems to me that happily-ever-after can be walking away when a romantic relationship ends and keeping a true friend, so when I wrote Hester I chose a different path—straight historical fiction based upon a previous literary work.

One of the perks of living as a writer is that, more than most people, you get to follow your passion, in Reed's case, the desire to explore the "what abouts" in The Scarlet Letter. You get to go on a treasure hunt every single day. And sometimes, you actually do uncover gems. Those are the days that make it all worth while.

on loving one's own story

It's been incredibly rainy this weekend. Even for the Pacific Northwest. For the first time ever, I called the Oregonian and had them redeliver the Sunday paper. Even though the thing was double-bagged it was soaked through by daylight!

But, now that I've devoured the dry replacement, and tuned in to the playoffs to find Seattle getting anhialated by Chicago, and have administered an herbal remedy to my ailing child, I am finally at my desk. The Empress awaits. Or rather, her contemporary counterpart, Liz, whose storyline needs a little bit more of a kick in the ass.

I have to say, on re-reading the manuscript, I rather love Sisi and Liz. I love their quirkiness, their spunkiness, their views of the world. Sure, there are a few plot points that need a little extra tension, a bit more breadcrumbing with the diary and all, but on the whole, this book I've written is exactly the sort of book I sought when I was a bookish youngster. Novels that featured girls, at their most vulnerable ages, with the reality of adulthood around the corner--the expectations, the lack of control over one's body and mind. The hormones!

I have no idea if anyone will ever publish this thing, of course. There's no explosions, no ghosts, no vampires. The magic is a bit more complicated than typical YA, and I linger in certain aspects of character longer than many readers have patience for, but if you write a book, invest in characters, a story, a world, shouldn't your main audience be yourself? I ask this in all sincerity.

Would you write a book you wouldn't read if that book went on to be a bestseller? Or would you rather write the best possible book you could, that pleases you, and have it go nowhere? Well, which one would you choose?

writer at work

Husband heading out of town, so starting tomorrow, I'm burying myself in finishing up the revision of Empress Chronicles. Four days of immersion. Heaven!