Last week, I picked up this lovely 1978 Barbie DreamHouse. I didn’t know if it would quite fit in my car – the original box said it was, “Over 4 Ft. Long! 3 Ft. High!”, which turned out to be true; and that same box also spelled DreamHouse as one word, so quit bugging me, Spell Check – but I suspected I’d need every inch of space in my vehicle for the ups and extras that were being offered as a Craigslist enticement. Besides offering several pieces of DreamHouse furniture, the seller also promised a Barbie Star Traveler motorhome for interested buyers. The motorhome is another 36” of vintage yellow plastic fun, and it filled the passenger seat as I drove home.
 
If Glynn had come along on my expedition, space would have been an issue. I’d have had to choose whether to leave the motorhome behind or my honey. Since I love the look of the Star Traveler, it’s probably a good thing that Glynn stayed home.
 
Since no DreamHouse is complete without a full collection of 1970s furniture, including plants and accessories, I was giddy at the thought of the challenge ahead. I get to fix up my own Malibu mansion! 1972’s Busy Barbie would wonder what she ever saw in Mod Hair Ken (have you seen the Ken dolls from that timeframe?), her cousin Francie would be dealing with her own issues, wanting to support her cousin but secretly infatuated with Mod Hair Ken (she’s young, she’ll outgrow it), and little sister Skipper would be wandering about downstairs, wondering why she never sees her parents.
 
Barbie never sees her parents, either. There are issues.
 
Speaking of issues, Flora in The Fourth Brother has issues, too. I should know because, before I get to play with my new dollhouse, I want to complete this novella. I thought we’d be done by the first of May, then the middle of May, and now….
 
The next story in the One Bride saga isn’t going to be finished by the end of the month because, despite all of our efforts, it keeps getting longer. This is a recurrent problem with this series; each story is supposed to be shorter than the last and, somehow, each one isn’t. When it comes to writing, Glynn and I are plotters, not pantsers, and we took extra pains to carefully plan each step in this sequel. THIS was the novella that we were going to bring in on time and at the expected wordage. We were oh-so-wrong. There is more of Flora’s story to tell.
 
And precious little time to tell it. This is not because of the DreamHouse challenge but, happy joy!, because we have babies coming to visit. This means I have a real house to baby-proof and then, after the babies leave, I get to prepare the place for more visitors. These adult visitors, happy joy!, are coming from China, and we can’t wait to see them, either.
 
I’m trying to hint that it’s going to be a busy summer. The upcoming months will be glorious but oh-so-busy.
 
For the next many weeks, then, this blog will be a little less regular than it has been recently. Not that I don’t have things to say – as Glynn tells me, I always have things to say – but because our available writing time is even more precious than usual. Unless I simply have to blog about something, I’ll focus on completing Flora’s story. Once that’s done, I’ll try to return to a regular schedule here.
 
But, also, babies.

Glynn here. Anne had a non-emergency emergency – 120 miles from here, someone on Craigslist is offering a 1978 Barbie House for an amazing price, and here’s the thing: if the doll house is what she thinks it is, all of the various pieces will fill the car so I wasn’t invited along – and, just before our little red car sped away, my main squeeze asked if I’d post tomorrow’s blog. Which is, as you see it, is today’s blog. Seeing as she’d forgotten to write one and I wasn’t doing anything at the moment.
 
As if watching Kolchak on Netflix was “doing nothing”. In the interest of accuracy, let me admit that I was giving Darren McGavin very little attention. I was too busy multi-tasking. As the show played, I was surfing the web on my tablet and playing Bonbon Cakery on my cell phone. Don’t be too quick to judge me in regards to my enjoyment of the phone game. If I ever become a chef again, as unlikely as that seems, I may need those skills.
 
As I often tell Anne, I am a man of depths. She often laughs.
 
And a man of depths should be completely capable of writing a last minute blog about writing. While multi-tasking, I’d been web-surfing some different writing sites and, on one of those sites, a new-ish writer was moaning about his lack of success. His first novel had just been rejected for the third time from a mid-level publisher. He said the dismissive email didn’t address his story or him by name; it was as much of a form rejection as the world can offer these days.
 
Our sensitive scribe described the rejection as an emotional kick in the head. He said something similar, anyway. I’ve avoid using the exact wording, since I don’t want anyone tracking him down and pointing him in the direction of this blog. I don’t intend to hurt anyone’s feelings here because I totally get it. I’ve been there. Rejections hurt. Sometimes, if you think you’ve finally climbed the mountain, if you love what you’ve written and you anticipate the world is going to welcome it with open arms, those rejections can sting a lot.
 
When I say I’ve been there, I mean it. I started submitting stories when I was thirteen. Unless you’re some kind of protégé, thirteen is several hundred days too young to expect quick success and I was no protégé. I collected rejections like other teens collected baseball cards. In those days, each of my stories went out through snail mail and each rejection returned the same way. The process took a while, and the days before a story was returned were good ones. It was similar to when I play Powerball these days: I might be a winner!
 
A couple of years passed before I actually was a winner and, even then, it was the literary equivalent of collecting a $2 scratcher. I was delighted, but not delusional. In the years that followed, I’d collect hundreds of rejections – filling the corkboard in my bedroom – and it took a couple of years for the sting to go away. When the ache did fade, it had nothing to do with any of my minor victories. It had everything to do with a very nice man.
 
If Anne hasn’t mentioned it, once upon a time my buddy and I had a fan magazine. The low budget venture was focused on comic books, comic strips, and all things science-fiction, since those were areas of our interest, and I was so young and optimistic, I thought nothing of  contacting my favorite writer for an interview. After a brief correspondence, Ray Bradbury agreed to meet with me and my friend.
 
It was a kindness, done only because….I’m guessing, he remembered being young and optimistic, too. We had a wonderful interview in his very small Los Angeles office, taking almost an hour of his time. After the interview was over, as we were standing to leave, I had one more question to ask: “Have you ever had a story rejected?”
 
He smiled at us. “Just this week.”
 
I was stunned. If he’d said, “Believe it or not, there was this one time, twenty-six years ago. Of course, the publisher fired the fool immediately and begged my forgiveness”, I’d have believed him. But a rejection this week? That I couldn’t believe.
 
On his paperbacks of that era, the New York Times called Bradbury, The World’s Greatest Science-Fiction Writer and I agreed with them. How could anyone ever say no to someone so talented? Seeming to understand my confusion, still smiling, he told me gently, “Everyone gets rejected. You try again.”
 
Maybe not the exact words, but the words as I remember them. From that point on, rejections hurt me a lot less. After all, they happened to everyone, even to some of the most successful writers in the world. That’s what I wished I’d told the new writer, the one who was shattered today by the return of his novel.
 
Try again.
 

Glynn reminded me that this website is supposed to be dedicated to our writing and I often forget to mention it at all when I’m blogging. That does kind of feel true. So let me tell you what we’re scribbling at the mo’.
 
One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Fourth Brother is our daily adventure and it’s roughly two-thirds complete. “Roughly” because we sometimes get carried away with the story, and then who knows how long it will end up? Our last two novellas ended up being thousands of words longer than we originally intended.
 
Fourth Brother is going very nicely. Flora has finally arrived at the logging camp and, in a day or so, she’ll have it out with the little snip from the church. I can’t wait for that scene. Our novel, The Black-hearted Mail Order Bride, is still locked at the halfway point but is far from forgotten. We were just discussing the story arc this weekend.  Also, we’re plotting a hot contemporary paranormal/mystery, a sequel to one of our other books that we really, really should put on the back burner but…the heart wants what it wants.
 
All in all, considering the speed of our output, we’ve put a lot on our very tiny writing plate. We always do, though, and it usually works out.
 
Now, back to our regularly-scheduled program: If you stopped by last week, you’re aware that I was about to surrender my evening to the horror-comedy, Krampus, recently released on DVD and available for viewing at a marginal fee…if you, like me, happen to have access to one of America’s few remaining video stores. Since Glynn and I are both suckers for horror-comedies – The Final Girls, Shaun of the Dead, Tremors, Ghostbusters, Cabin in the Woods, Evil Dead 2, and many, many more – we couldn’t wait to see it. A good time was assured for all. And, by “all”, I mean, me, and Glynn, and Poison the Chihuahua.
 
In my opinion, the audience for horror-comedies is a limited one, which means that many people I otherwise love and adore don’t understand why we want to watch The Frighteners when a Blu-ray copy of Rowing With the Wind is readily available. These are good people, more to be pitied than censured, but I’m more of an Army of Darkness kind of gal. Me, Glynn and Poison, we’re in tune with one another. When we sit together to watch this kind of movie, b’gum, we have no doubt we’re going to have a good time.
 
Although it’s possible the Chihuahua is mostly in it for the popcorn.
 
Last week, when I arrived at the video store, I discover they’re all out of Krampus. There’s evidence of empty rental boxes, no evidence of the actual DVDs. Quickly giving up on supporting the little guy, I head for the nearest Redbox. (Unlike local video stores, they’re everywhere.) That red-boxed, low-priced tease shows the title I want and I reach for my plastic. I’m ready to swipe it when I suddenly realize – “That’s not Krampus!”
 
Not the Krampus I want, anyway. Apparently, Redbox’s corporate masters were unwilling to spring $16.99 (on-line retail) for the real thing, preferring to substitute Krampus: The Reckoning in its place. I don’t believe they did this because they thought K: TR was a superior movie or the people’s choice. I believe they did this to trick people.
 
When I returned home, I dug a little deeper…and I still believe Redbox’s corporate masters did not have good intentions when they ordered this title.  I wasn’t the only one fooled. On Amazon, some people paid for this thing.  K: TR carries mostly one-star reviews and most of them say things like, “Wrong Krampus movie. I was looking for the new one” and “This wasn’t the Krampus movie I expected” and “I thought this was supposed to be the one that went to the theater and I was soooo wrong! This movie sucked!”
 
Still on Amazon, I was surprised to discover there are still more Krampus-like Krampus movies out there. There’s Krampus: The Christmas Devil (a reviewer wrote, “Let me start by saying I rented the wrong Krampus. The acting was on par with pornos”), and the 26-minute Night of the Krampus (“Should have been titled CRAPUS” according to one fan) and A Christmas Horror Story, featuring an anthology of tales. One of those stories has Krampus horrifying a family with car trouble. The Christmas DVD was the only one of the Krampus flicks with a majority of good reviews plus – yes – William Shatner as a drunken DJ.
 
I’m a sucker for a woozy Captain Kirk. So, when the video store crew didn’t answer their phone, back I went. Still, no Krampus on the shelves. Alas, there was no Christmas Horror Story there, either. No tipsy Bill Shatner to ease my pain.
 
When I got home, Glynn and I watched an old Columbo, instead.  Poison loved her popcorn.
 
And how was your week?
 

​My friend, Kim, has a variety of interests – gardening and motorcycles and cooking and guns and…well, the list is NOT a short one – and, not so long ago, she decided to add “beekeeper” to her many and varied hobbies.
 
What is not one of her interests? Reading my mail-order bride stories. But that’s okay because (a) to begin with, she’s a wonderful friend; and (b) not so long ago, she sent us a lovely jar of honey; and (c) did I mention her gun collection? So when she sent me a fun image of the back of her beekeeping hat, I shared it with Glynn because the photo was meant to be silly and it amused me.
 
Glynn studied the cell phone shot with an odd intensity. Then he told me, “We should loan some money to a beekeeper.”
 
Men can be confusing, have you ever noticed that? Kim excluded, I personally have had rather limited interaction with bees and beekeepers. When I was a child, a bee stung me – quite unfairly, I thought then and still think now – and I decided at that moment to admire them from afar. I am on Team Bee, I wish them well, but I’ve never had a particular desire to offer cash to their handlers.
 
“Kiva,” Glynn explained, reading my puzzlement. “We can do it through Kiva. Every now and then, a beekeeper shows up on their site, needing money. Our previous loans have been paid back, our account is flush, and you’ve been wanting to send it out again. Let’s lend a few bucks to a beekeeper.”
 
I didn’t even know that was a possibility.
  
If you’re unaware of Kiva.org, it’s a nonprofit organization that uses crowdfunding to provide microloans in over 80 countries. Local entrepreneurs in, mostly, far and distant lands, reach out to a social business, or a school, or some type of micro-lender in their area; the micro-lender sends the person’s profile to Kiva; and people like Glynn and I back a piece of the entrepreneur’s loan at $25 a pop. Kiva gets no cut, we get no interest, but the would-be business owner gets the money they need to go forward and at 0% interest.
 
In the decade or so that Kiva’s been around, some $800 million has been given out. Almost all of it has been repaid. All in all, it’s a good thing and we’ve enjoyed being one of their supporters.
 
So, in Kim’s name, I went looking for a beekeeper on Kiva. There’s a search engine on the site that acknowledged that “beekeeping” loans were a thing but, at the mo’, they told me there weren’t any hive tenders in need of a hand.
 
Here are similar loans, they promised me:
 
There was a guy in Tajikistan who wanted to purchase some jewelry for resale. He’d been in the gold and silver business for almost ten years, it seemed like a solid loan, but what did his request have to do with bees? There was a different man in Tajikistan who intended to purchase fruits and vegetables for resale – but, once again, the bee-connection seemed vague at best. We could talk pollination, I guess. Maybe. And there was a hard-working teenager in Palestine, with a shop job, who wanted $800 to buy a mobile phone so that he could keep in contact with friends and family and, also, surf the ‘net. There was no link to the honey-bringers that I could see.
 
I also feel compelled to say, EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS for a cell phone? Cell phone prices aren’t crazy-expensive in Palestine; maybe our intrepid teen couldn’t find the $27 special that I carry around but I somehow suspect there were cheaper alternatives out there somewhere.
 
Oh, he was so not getting our money.
 
I told Glynn that the beekeepers were on hiatus but I still wanted to make a new loan. I suggested he take over and see what he found. Glynn soon selected a 46-year old Albanian woman in Egypt who needed a loan to “stock up on new undergarments and used appliances to sell”.
 
If you’re wondering about the bee-based connection, so am I, but I didn’t go there. Instead, I asked, “It’s a weird combination, don’t you think? Selling new undergarments and used appliances? Does anyone anywhere do that?”
 
“I think it’s a two-part request,” Glynn said. “One, I think she personally wants to stock up on new undergarments and, two, by the way, she needs used appliances to resell.”
 
He smiled at me. He might have been joking, or just amused by the odd quality of the request. Or he might have been in that strange man-place that only men get to visit. All I knew was, I couldn’t be done with this soon enough.
 
“Okay, great,” I said, “let’s fund her.” Then I went to text Kim to thank her for the jar of honey.
 
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the local video store to check out the horror movie, KRAMPUS. Maybe a good DVD will help me forget about our recent Kiva loan.