That would be me about to collide with my bed.

Last night I finished Angela Knight's Master of Dragons which I enjoyed. The lights were off before 10:00 pm. I didn't go to the gym Monday or Tuesday but slept an extra hour instead. I'm tired right now. So I'm going to bed. I hope I'm not coming down with something.

Anyway, I've started sketching out the next chapters for Scandal, and I'd do more tonight, and probably should, but I'm too darn tired. I don't even care that it's not dark yet.

Labels: reading, Scandal

Photo by
Amodiovalerio Verde

I sent Magellan's Witch off to Grand Central (Warner).

Up next: Scandal

Labels: Magellan's Witch, Scandal

that Magellan's Witch is done?

Today, I did a read through on the computer and did not make a single major change and very few moderate ones. I did change the POV of one chapter, which I will take a look at tomorrow, but honestly, I'm at the point now where I'm likely to make things worse instead of better.

I think.

That's what it seems like now.

But all my trouble spots of late, that pesky chapter 10, the vexing chapter 17, both I just read right through with bated breath...

Is it time for the fork? I'm going to sleep on it. We'll see.

Labels: editing, get the fork out?, Magellan's Witch

The good news is I can email Magellan's Witch to my editor. The bad news is it has to be in Word format. arghh!! Word is just so awful. I'm going to spend July 31 trying to get the darn thing to work. Stuff that is an absolute breeze in Word Perfect is a nightmare in Word. Oh well. I think it's coming along. I got through this last round of edits without ripping anything to shreds. I have my list of Action Items to go through now. These are issues, details and plot points that feel like they're dangling unresolved or unaddressed. I got through two of those tonight and have 3-4 more to deal with tomorrow. I'm not going to row tomorrow, I'll do the make up class on August 4 instead. I'm hoping to push through an entire read through tomorrow. But only if I get to bed pretty soon.

In other news, um, is there any?

Labels: editing, loose ends, Magellan's Witch

So, last night as I was reading chapters 16-18 I was bored. Yuck. So I cut a bunch of stuff and had a sort of a glimmer of an idea but wasn't sure what to do about it. Today I cut even more. A sea of red ink, I tell you. Took the Darling Child to soccer practice and since they had a scrimmage tacked on, I had extra time at the OTHER Starbucks, although just to be safe I ordered hot mint tea. While there, I cut all but 3 pages of chapter 18. Fortunately, Chp 17 was kind of long so I did my find a good chapter ending trick and stuck the rest of chapter 18 onto it, then around page 7 started looking for a place that had high tension. Found it on page 8. All the rest went into a new and improved Chapter 18. Then I re-read what I had starting from chapter 16 and it was good. Darn good.

Yes, today I was a sculptor in that I carved away all the hooptedoodle and left only the good parts and then brought other parts into better relief, with a sort of chiaroscuro effect. Only on paper. The 3D shadows and art part happens in your head.

Now I'm home, I have a dirty rotten headache, but the DC has been fed, the laundry is started and I've printed out the new chapters 16-18 and can only pray they hold up they way they did when I was reading them on the laptop. I used to get all depressed about cutting crap, but today, not at all. The crap needs to go, and fast. So it was really easy and painless to do.

Labels: editing, Magellan's Witch

My changes from yesterday seem to be pretty awesome. After two days of writing and rewriting chapter 10, I made it to chapter 11 and couldn't stop. I had to read chapter 12. Thank goodness. Hopefully nothing else major. That would be nice.

Labels: editing, Magellan's Witch

Over the weekend, I totally ran into a problem that resulted in me making some changes to chapter 9 and significant changes to that pesky chapter 10. Today I got some good feedback that resulted in me re-doing chapter 3 from my hero's Point of View (POV) which I did after MORE significant changes to chapter 10 while I was waiting for the darling child's soccer practice to be over (and hey, see below about the Worst Starbuck's Experience Ever!) I got home from the WSEE, transferred my changes to chapter 10 to the computer, though I ended up dropping a big chunk of the changes, but I knew that about 20 minutes after I wrote them (long hand - I was in the car at the soccer field on account of the WSEE.) Right. So blah blah. Then I rewrote chapter 3 and reprinted the 1st 100 pages since I already transferred my weekend changes to the computer. Now it's 10:41 and I'm going to try to read some.

So, my Worst Starbuck's Experience Ever: After I dropped off the DC at soccer practice I drove back to the new Starbucks that used to be my favorite local coffee shop (sniff). So, I'm willing to admit that I was saddened by the demise of the old place and struck by the irony of a Starbucks opening in the exact location, since Starbucks is part of why the old place went under. My son could walk from practice to the Starbucks though. Very close. I asked for a Mint Iced Tea. Please say this to yourself, perhaps out loud, Mint Iced Tea Mint Iced Tea Mint Iced Tea and then imagine that you are an earnest young Barista who is perhaps deaf or partially deaf and also distracted by something going on behind her involving someone rushing out from the back with a large pair of rubber handled pliers. And imagine that I repeat this several times. My Mint Iced Tea cost me $2.50 and I think to myself that if they're charging that much just for the ice I'm never getting an iced tea from them again.

Behind the counter, everyone's bending around the guy with the pliers including all the people who should be making a Mint Iced Tea. But as I'm looking around for a place to sit with me and my big green binder containing Magellan's Witch, I see 1) everyone huddling around another barista and looking at me, waiting for my Mint Iced Tea. They go back to watching the guy with the pliers. 2) I also see there are 6 small tables each with two chairs with people in them. And one empty table with no chairs. Plus 4 ugly chairs that look like torture devices in the sun. Two of which are occupied. And over in the corner are these scary looking high chair things with poles in front of them. The poles have a metal surface about the size of a cup of coffee and no bigger. There's no way my big green binder is going to fit on the poles. So, there is an empty table, but no chairs because obviously they didn't buy enough chairs for the number of tables in the store.

There is no sign of my Mint Iced Tea. I go back and ask if they can make it to go, since they have no place for me to sit and work (and buy food or more tea later either.) Only they start trying to hand me this tall cup of iced black gunk and I look at it and say, "That's a Mint Iced Tea?" And the earnest barista says, "No, that's an Iced Venti." Right. She totally missed a syllable. Several times. So they make me my Mint Iced Tea only it's hot, the boiling water having melted all the ice. I pointed out I'd been overcharged for my hot Mint Iced Tea. They gave me a card for a free beverage, not so useful for me, instead of my money back. I tossed my NOT Mint Iced Tea on the way out and returned to the practice field and worked in the car.

Some days it's hard to be a writer.

Labels: editing., Magellan's Witch

I finished last night about 12:30 (or would that be this morning?). It was exciting the entire time. I loved it. I cried, smiled and gasped. I'll write more later when the book has been out longer.

Back to work on Magellan's Witch, which I think may just have come together. In the nick of time, too. We'll see. I'm starting another read-through now.

Labels: editing, Harry Potter, Magellan's Witch

Well, so far so good. I got the last round of changes in and have started rereading from the middle forward. Nothing major to fix yet and I'm up to chapter 28. So, we'll see.

I've been working hard to avoid spoilers to Harry Potter 7. So far so good on that, too. Discussions abound in the house about what we think will happen.

Off to work.

Labels: editing, Magellan's Witch

Well, you're supposed to read the post title to the tune of I've been Working on the Railroad. Pretend, OK?

Went to see Harry Potter 5 last night. I was mentally broke from working all day. Great movie! Loved it. A lot. Got to bed at 11:00 pm. Urk.

No soccer practice for the kidlet this week, so I thought, great! I'll get home, abandon all my parental duties and get all my changes from the weekend into the computer and I can resend to one of my readers who just started and will much appreciate having the better middle version. But then at 7:30 I remembered I had to go the soccer board meeting (that's my volunteer job) and I couldn't blow it off because the team gets fined $25.00 if there's no rep at the Board Meeting. Got home from that about 9:00pm, worked for an hour and ended up sending off the revised 1-23. I'll finish up tomorrow.

Sigh.

I had to stop at 23 because the new 24 needs more of an overhaul, and I didn't want to start that this late at night. I have to get enough sleep --- Crud. It's 10:48 pm. Rats. 4:30 is early. I'm off to bed.

Labels: deadline, editing, Magellan's Witch

Well, I had to fix another couple chapters. Sigh. By fix I mean eviscerate. I chopped out four pages at least. Possibly more. I'm not sure right now. I'm working on it between sentences of this blog. Still, any time you take out the boring stuff and improve what's left, that's reason to celebrate. I just wish it were June 14th instead of Bastille Day. (Vive la France!) Oh well. Off to do more work.

Labels: editing, Magellan's Witch, ripping to shreds

The awful news I've been hearing is true. Author Ronda Thompson passed away yesterday. A while back, Ronda sent me the most wonderful email about my book, The Spare. She loved the book and wanted to tell me how talented she thought I was. We've emailed back and forth ever since, commiserating and congratulating each other about our careers and lives. We had lunch at last year's RWA conference in Atlanta, and one of my biggest disappointments about not going to RWA this year was not seeing Ronda again. Ronda was one of the funniest people I've known, and generous with her time and herself, and I will not only miss her, but be forever grateful that she took the time out to email me after she read The Spare. Every author knows how much it means when someone troubles to let you know he or she liked your work. When that praise comes from a fellow author, it means even more.

Ronda, thank you.
I miss you.

Labels: Ronda Thompson

So, I got to chapter 17 of Magellan's Witch before I had to really massively rewrite chapters 17 and 18. I've been fixing a lot of stuff. Sigh. The problem was shut up stupid nagging voice those chapters where my hero and heroine weren't together enough. I thought I'd fixed those, but I didn't shut up fix them quite enough. So today I was right, wasn't I? Shut up. You should have listened to me.

Actually, stupid nagging voice, I did listen. It just took a few days to know I needed to listen even harder. I need you, but you're really irritating to the right brain side of me.

Left turn people. I'm off to see if I need to make an even sharper left.

Labels: editing, Magellan's Witch

No RWA conference for me this year. Nope. I have my nose to the grindstone, working hard on polishing Magellan's Witch. I'm up to chapter 14 and so far no disasters, rewrites or deletions. I've corrected a few continuity issues, caught another typo or two and am generally continuing to deepen and improve.

In Other Writing news, I was saddened to hear of the death of Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. Her website hasn't been updated with the news yet, but take a minute to visit the site of a literary pioneer. Thank you, Ms. Woodiwiss. We'll miss you.

Other news includes upcoming books I'm itching to read. Harry Potter 7, of course. We had a lively discussion over dinner tonight about who we thought is the character mostly likely to die. My son said Snape or Hermione. I said, what if it's Hagrid? Others thought perhaps Harry. -- If it is, I can see the book flying to the wall right now.

But, the book I can hardly wait to read is J.R. Ward's next Black Dagger Brotherhood book, Lover Unbound. Michelle Buonfiglio over at B(u)y The Book is reading an ARC right now. Waahhh! I want an ARC too! I have the email from Amazon assuring me my copy is coming. It better be here September 25th! Sigh. Vishous.Sigh.

All righty. Back to work.

Labels: books, editing, Magellan's Witch, polishing

At last! I got through the rest of Magellan's Witch. The read-back caught a lot of typos I probably never would have found on my own. I hit some boring patches and either deleted them or fixed them -- I hope. I deleted a chapter, split another in two and changed the POV (point of view) on one of them. This morning I added in the stuff to support my Fantastic Solution To A Nagging Issue. I have about 92,000 words. Which is about where I tend to up up no matter what, give or take a couple thousand. So, now this thing goes out to readers. My wonderful printer that does duplex (on my gosh, I am SO IN LOVE with this feature!!!) saved me a couple hundred sheets of paper when I printed it out for my neighbor who's a journalist. And how I'm going to get it into Word (can I just say YUCK! here?) and email it to my agent and a writer acquaintance. We'll see if I get feedback in time, since RWA is right in the middle of this. Rats.

OK, so what do I think about this book? I'm so close it's hard to say. I'm pretty sure the first 10 chapters totally rock and I'm hoping my work of the last two weeks has gotten the rest to match. I crossed some lines in this book, to which I say, so freaking what? That's just how this book had to be. My heroine has multiple encounters with characters who are not the hero and I'll also just put it out there that sometimes the hero is present during those encounters, and he's not just sitting around on his hands either. And, there's some inter species shape shifting stuff, too.

I have three more weeks to work on this. I'll start another read-through tomorrow sometime.

What else? I'm going to relax for what's left of the day. I've done the shopping and I'm going to read and surf the net and maybe play around on MySpace.

Labels: editing, Magellan's Witch, relaxing

Coupla things before I succumb to another day of panic mode. So, I have this day job. In the words of Patti O'Shea, an Evil Day Job or EDJ. Yeah. I have one of those. I have to explain the EDJ in order for this post to make sense, sorry. I'm a SQL Server Database Administrator (DBA). As such, I work with Enterprise level databases that run on expensive hardware and software. Yada yada yada. As with most things that involve the need for the development of expertise, there are mailing lists. For the EDJ I belong to one such SQL Server mailing list. Mostly people post questions and answers about, well, yes, SQL Server. The list members are from all over the world. Literally. Not so interesting and not so relevant to the writing, you'd think. Au contraire!

For quite some time I have been jotting down the many cool and awesome names these people have. I've probably got at least 100 names. Some of which I am using in Magellan's Witch. Not complete names. There are very few that are cool and awesome on a total name basis. Like, Harsh. There's some DBA somewhere whose name, I think it's his first name, but I'm not sure, is Harsh. Then there's Kynan. Both of them are in Magellan's Witch. So, I've been really pleased to be building up such a solid list of cool names. Today, I hit the motherlode. Not of names, but alcohol.

I'm not much of a drinker and I don't watch TV or read many magazines that have liquor ads in them. This makes me clueless when it comes to choosing alcoholic drinks that alpha males might sit around drinking. This morning when I came to work there were already 150 emails from the DBA list, and fully half of them were of the subject Select unique records or something like that. Easy, easy thing to do in SQL.

SELECT DISTINCT [SomeFieldName] FROM [SomeTable]

So, like, 150 emails about this. Uh, no. 150 emails about what to drink on Friday nights, with amusing and even insightful comments. Like these:

Vodka... made by the French who we all know have been purveyors of fine Vodka since Czar Louis XIV was on the throne of Ireland....

What!!
I bloody well hope not!
As they're [Boddington's] canned/bottled in Manchester I 'm assuming they're using Imperial measurements... but then the UK measures stuff in that Froggy invented metric system... so god only knows...
Zut alors!

However, I do know that it just fills a pint pot fashioned after a German beer steinl [sic], whereas when I use a US standard beer glass I have to drink down the first third of the glass before topping it off... boo shame...

On a cold day you need Laphroaig or Lagavullin... perhaps Macallan or Dalwhinnie, Cragganmore or Talikser or Glenkinchie Single Island and Highland Malt whisky laddie!!!!

Yeah, I used to get Lagavullin for $40.00, not it hovers around $80, so at the bar I get Laphroaig for 6.50 (happy hour) or around $8.00. Lagavullin is $15.00 for a measured shot. Out of my league.

Of course, to be fair, I can get Lagavullin for $10.00 at other bars...
but still...

See? The motherload. I have like a page and a half of alcohol from around the world wisdom.

*Red Stripe, as probably everyone but me knows, is a Guinness beer, and it's probably mentioned at least once a week. Big in the UK it seems.

OK, off to panic mode.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, research

It's a holiday today (Happy Birthday USA!) and I slept until 10:30 am. Whoa. Guess I was exhausted. I feel rested right now. There are various festivities today and a child to entertain and spend time with. We're going to the movies and then he has a party (I'll be working!) and then fireworks at my brother's.

Day before yesterday I deleted a boring chapter from Magellan's Witch and rewrote the boring beginning of another. As I was in bed trying to keep my eyes open while I was reading a book about Structure and Plot, this great idea popped into my head about what my heroine had done. It solves quite a few issues for me. So I had to notebook that because I was so tired I was afraid if I didn't I'd fall asleep and forget. The read through continues, but slowly because I've had to stop and fix several things.

Anyhoo, off to celebrate and spend time with family.

Labels: editing, Magellan's Witch, ripping to shreds

I've been having Magellan's Witch read back to me (using Text Aloud). It's a great way to catch typos, repetition of subject matter, words, phrases and other awkwardness and just plain boring parts. When it's working, you can feel it. While I'm listening, I have my file open so I can fix things right away. I've got one spot I need to go over and fix up a bit, and last night I added a kind of unexpected bit. I'll have to have that chapter reread today. And I swapped the order of two chapters. I'm pretty sure things are coming together. Back to work.

Labels: editing, Magellan's Witch, Text Aloud