Nearly 52K. I have a miserable cold. ick. But I am in Santa Fe NM, where today I presented a paper on Gothic Novelist Eleanor Sleath. Leaving tomorrow. But I've also gotten a lot of good work done on The Heir. There's something about having a low grade fever that wonderfully concentrates the mind, plus it always makes me feel sorry for myself and gives me some great angst to put behind my story. I have to go to work on Monday so next week I will be working 5 days instead of 4 which sucks. But may Monday I can come in, do the needful and then go home. I have a presentation for school for which I am in no way prepared. Also ick. But, I will finish up reading on the plane I guess and hope for feverish inspiration. Any way, I want to go to this Jane Austen panel for the conference, so I'm off. Will come back soon and work some more on The Heir.

I forgot there was a chapter (of The Heir) most of which could be salvaged, so once I got it properly named and placed in the right order, I have 51K+ words. Which means I cut 5000 words of deadwood, and that, my friends, is cause for celebration. (repeat this frequently.) Two more good reviews of the Spare on Amazon, both of which greatly and specifically disagree with the person who disliked it which makes me feel much better. People are allowed not to like a book, and I think the disagree-er has some points and plainly disliked Sebastian a great deal. But, since The Spare is my book, I can also say that when I read my own work I sometimes see every single flaw and feel every single shortcoming, and I hate the book exactly like the person who did hate it. But, that time a while back when I read the book in ARC format, it was really good, and Sebastian was great. What I really want now is to whip The Heir into shape so that it makes its own story. I do so much prefer to edit than write from scratch.

Also, I burned my hand today in a very stupid blunder and it really really really hurts. I have taken a vicodin and can now feel myself floating off to I-feel-no-pain-land. I hope it's better tomorrow because I have to drive my son to wushu in Berkeley, and that is a long time with no ice.

I have today (Friday) off work because I have to work Monday. So, I cut deadwood today and went from 56K to 49K. Yes, it hurt, I confess the numbers matter, but now I don't have any of that stuff I wrote before the story and the h/h started taking shape. On the other hand, I haven't yet written any of the chapters I've been mulling around. But I think now that I've got them married, they need to get out and about. GML is supposed to be the romantic here, convincing PE that there is, indeed, such a thing as love. Must get son to bed. More work.

So, I know now of at least one other person who liked The Spare (a lot, it would seem) so that officially outweighs the person who didn't. But I have much work to do on The Heir, which maybe isn't quite as bad as I thought. Some of the fixes worked. But I have a headache.

I'm at 56K+ on the Heir and must report that yesterday and this morning it sucked. I have since reordered many chapters and will do another read through today and tomorrw. Sigh. Waldenbooks in Santa Rosa just now got The Spare. That seems slow to me. And no one I know in Canada has been able to find it, plus someone just pointed out that the cover is not embossed like Lord Ruin was. Arrggh. How come? I told myself that it was because they spent so much on the hot artwork they couldn't afford embossing, but even I, the queen of rationalization, sees that as a pretty major stretch. This is what comes of sitting between Barbara Freethy and Brenda Novak at a book signing. A great opportunity for me to see Real Writers sign books. But I got a few pity signs. Plus those two are really nice. Me, I'm just the writer nobody heard of and whose books nobody can find in the stores. There's no embossing on The Spare because my publisher knows it's not worth it for mid list flunkies like me. Yes, I am neurotic. And before I do the full "Carolyn-becomes-her-mother-before-your-very-eyes" (Arghhhhh! Run for your lives! It's the martyr queen and she's out of control!) I will take my sucky MS to bed with me and fix it.

Things going well writing-wise. I have actually started working on ideas for Lucy and Thrale, so I think that's the next project. The collage thing is really fun. But I am generally anxious about all things writing.

Today, someone emailed me to say The Spare was not awful, which was really nice to hear because someone wrote a horrible review on Amazon that still has me thinking I've been found out as a fraud writer. She also said she stayed up really late to read it and got up early to finish it, so that's good, right? I am telling myself that not everyone loves me, but I still wish they would. The little Teletubby writer? Except Teletubbies are kind of creepy, come to think of it. But it would be nice if Mr. Sunshine would rise and smile on me every morning and make everything in my life just peachy. While I'm obsessing, I should see if the rankings have changed. [Hum Jeopardy theme] OK I am offically confused. I checked the history and supposedly even though Amazon said 7K yesterday ,it was actually 1.5 million, and today it's 21K. So much to obsess over and so much time in which to do it!

I just checked my rankings on Amazon and BN, and The Spare is 7K something while Lord Ruin, interestingly enough, isn't far behind with 9K, and that means The Spare has given Lord Ruin a bit of a bounce. I'll have to thank my sister for buying The Spare, I'm sure that's what got me out of the millions and into the thousands. I'll give my mother a free copy, but everyone else has to buy it. sigh So, now I can add rankings back to my list of things to be neurotic about. Of course ranking in the thousands on Amazon is like being a raindrop in Lake Tahoe, but it's a number, and a smaller number, too. I can pretend that means someday I'll get a check. What I need to do is get a new agent and finish The Heir. And instead of finishing my reading for school, I'm going to stay up too late and work on The Heir.

I've been collaging away, after reading the RWR article on it, and I think, if nothing else, it's really fun. I'm not sure I have immense amounts to learn about my characters since the story's pretty far along, but it's very helpful to have the front of my brain occupied with artsy stuff that actually has a connection to those excruciating detials I have to write about. And there have been some pleasant realizations and clarifications, so I will say that I will definately do this again. I spent quite a lot of time making and coloring books for the collage, I built a little library section and it came out great. I think if I ever get the digital camera connecting to the PC again, I'll have to post pictures.

Well, someone wrote and told me they enjoyed The Spare, so that's nice. Strange, though, that I can't stand to read my books once they're done. I am tired and stressed.

Why is it that the last time I read through The Spare it seemed pretty good, but nowI'm sure it's awful? I think I'm too distressed to be honest to the blog.

Am paper-reading still. (I think I've just coined a phrase there). Going well. Doing some notebooking on the end, got some good ideas. But I did come across a boring part to be fixed. My copies of The Spare arrived yesterday, so I guess it's real. And someone took pity on me and told me she had the book. Plus she gave me a link to a site where a reader (A reader!!) liked it enough to read it twice through. Slake.com There's a link on the right "The Pedestal" that cheered me up a lot. But now I have to get to work. It occurs to me that I am close enough to being done with the WIP that I should get on the stick about an agent.

55K+ a few. Light bulb moment accounted for. I'm moving more and more to the country portion of the story. Supposedly, The Spare is out, but no one has seen it in bookstores that I know of. No emails from readers yet. It's shipping from Amazon. Maybe I should order a copy for me, just so I know what my book looks like. The List is going well, but I have no ending yet. It's just a mess ending-wise. I need to change the title, too. Am toying with The Heir, which will have a couple of meanings for the book. I was thinking of Honor for a while, but I think the other one is better. Oh, anyway. Now that the beginning is decent enough, I need to find an agent, otherwise I'll have the sell the dang thing myself. [Snotty comment deleted]