While writing at Fireside Coffee Lodge last night, I finally felt like I was falling back into The Car Novel. You know that feeling: Reconnecting with old family and friends, I mean with your characters, knowing in a heartbeat what some will say in response to anyone and any situation, and immersing yourself back into the world you've lovingly and painstakingly created for them.

In real life and in The Car Novel, the timing is right. The season has just begin. The weather is the same, the worries are the same, the challenges are the same. The frantic, time-line rush to get everything right feels the same for me as I'm editing the first half of my MS for the third time and for my characters as they are walking into a season unlike any they've ever known. Look out big block, side-draft pumping, blower-clad, paddle-shifting, open exhaust, triple chromed, street rod-lovin' world, here I go again!

Come July, I expect I'll be more Floyd, Cecil, Scratchy, and Novato than myself, a mental state that I expect will last deep into autumn. If anyone out there has got a burning question they've wanted to ask me, ask now or risk getting obsessive automotive trivia gibberish later.

The other morning I woke from a bad dream in which I had stupidly allowed an ex-coworker to drive my car and he totaled it.

Let me officially go on record here for those who may not know me well that in the past, in what I might in the future refer to as my ancient times, I occasionally allowed people to drive my vehicles. It usually had something to do with varying sums of money exchanging hands or promises to be forever in my debt (Yeah, if I had a dime for everything I heard that!). On the last occurrence however, back in the early '80's, I thought I really knew the guy and he wanted to take his girlfriend, a very nice young lady, to her senior prom in style. Promises of filling the gas tank before returning my car, pinkie swears that he'd not go over the speed limit, crank the stereo too loud, etc, etc, etc. Yeah, yeah, okay, here's the key, be careful, have fun, stop bothering me, yada, yada, yada.

( Sad tale of car woe behind cut )

This guy who I thought I knew turned out to be what I considered an asshole. Wasn't the first nor the last to cross my path. So when I dreamed that one of my ex-coworkers, a guy whom everyone at the time, my boss included, referred to as a royal pain in the ass, rolled my car off an embankment while I watched, I woke in a sweat (non-menopausal related). But after a minute, I felt good, almost happy even because while I dream about cars often, it's not often I dream of cars AND assholes at the same time and that only means one thing: The Car Novel, that just happens to contain a couple of asshole characters (because the car world is full of them -- trust me on this) isn't just calling to me; it's jumping up and down, waving it's arms, and hollering my name loud and clear. Oddly, I feel like I'm coming home and it feels good.

For as much as I complained a couple of days ago about stuffing my half-finished short story (YAWT - Yet Another Working Title) into the Dead Story file, I can't keep myself from thinking about how I might be able to fix it. I love it when my brain works like this because just as often, it doesn't.

In other news, my entry in the Writers of the Future contest - 2nd quarter, came back. While I didn't place anything with them, rejection doesn't really bother me (I learned to deal with it a lot growing up) and so, I rewarded myself by sending the story right back out to another market, to a publication that had good things to say to me last year in a personalized rejection on what I consider now a lesser story. Get back in that saddle, get back on that horse. A-yup, I live for this kind of thing. And while I was at it, I sent WotF an entry for their 3rd quarter contest. That makes six of my stories out there looking for homes, or hopefully at the very least, a word or two of guidance.

Next month, The Car Novel bubbles to the surface again. With the first half edited and the second half's outline nearly complete, I've got no reason to come up short on finishing it this year. Time to dig out my aloha shirts and my favorite Vans, dust off my car, squirt some Uber-Gloss on it, and get the oil changed (finally), and dive back into Cecil, Floyd, and Scratchy's world.

Now if only the weather outside would cooperate. Still having cold, wet, windy late February/early March-like days. Still experiencing near-freezing overnight temperatures. STILL have those geraniums camping out in the garage (under grow lights thank goodness).

Lots of things to work on today: My Broad Universe reading for Norwescon, getting a story wrapped up to send out for INK critique, a final polish on another to send to market, a handle to find on Working Title. In another month or so, The Car Novel will be screaming to be looked at and pecked at again.

It never really ends. I need to internalize that statement now that I feel somewhat real with this writing gig. Isn't this what I wanted? Isn't this what I said I wanted? Of course it is, but how scary this world can be if I let it.

(I'm not letting it.)

ETA: Got my Broad Universe piece edited for what I swear is the last time. The INK piece has been polished but will need to be waved in front of Steve's eyes before sending it out along with the story going out to market. I'm finally proud of the INK piece because I think I may have sufficiently added a key element that helps tie it all together finally. Working Title still isn't budging. Gosh, that story is stubborn! It's like trying to pull a planet out of my . . . nevermind.

It has begun, that time of year again. Time when our part of the country starts thinking about the upcoming season and checking supplies. Calls are being made to manufacturers, date books are being checked, budgets are being carefully gone over to allow for the extra weekend costs. It's time to pull the covers off and get in there with rags and polish, toothbrushes and Dremels. It's the start of car show season and year three in which I won't be participating.

I've found a new challenge, a new love, that's called writing.

A year and a half ago, I began what I refer to as The Car Novel. The Car Novel is a fictional tale about the culture and people in the sport of showing fancy-shmancy cars. It's a world I know very, very well.

After cruising along wonderfully, right around the 60,000 word mark, I hit a snag. Actually, someone else hit it for me and the lack of logic at a key turning point stopped me cold. Last November, as part of National Novel Writing Month, something I have participated in the past four years, I went through every chapter thus written of The Car Novel, all twenty-three of them and added rewrite/edit notes in red pen so I could jump back in at some point and work toward finishing the damned thing. Each page looks to have been dipped in red ink. But I'm convinced I will finish it. In fact, I promised myself this would be the year.

But then, winter comes to our area with snow and ice and people garage their cars and spend the winter ogling speed shop catalogs and dreaming of warm, summer days. I get lazy and don't think about cars or The Car Novel even though my characters in the story scream often at me from the back of my mind. Those who have read a chapter here or there know of which characters specifically I speak.

This evening I visited the Portland Roadster Show in downtown Portland, Oregon. In 2006, I took a local club to their first 1st place finish for overall display. The year before, I won my class for individual category. I met a lot of people there, people who run such things and have every year for the past fifty-two, and I made a lot of friends. Tonight, I ran into several of those friends and we started up conversations as if we had been talking nonstop all along, without my two year absence gap.

It was exactly what I hoped would happen. You see, I went there with a plan. Walking up and down rows of cars, collecting dozens of show flyers for the coming season, talking to old Hot Rod Council friends, drooling over hanging out at the SoCal booth, it all came back, everything I need to pick back up The Car Novel . . . when I'm ready this coming summer, after finishing the short stories I'm currently working on, when warm weather arrives and the days dawn with dreams of dewy morning registrations and the fragrance of tire gloss and car wax drifts in the air.