Happy Halloween to everyone!

Well, I took my son over to my brother's house -- where we live, we have exactly 3 neighbors.... There's no Trick or Treating here. So off we went. I admired a few costumes (they were cute and/or scary) said Hi to friends and family and then I took the laptop into the living room and started working on Scandal. I had to fix my outline so that it's useful as I try to find the right home for everything. When I'd finally done that, I wrote a new chapter and it came out pretty good, I think.

Then home, at which point my son complained about having any portion of his 5.6 pounds of candy confiscated. I was going to put in picture, but it's taking too long and I have to get up early.

So, anyone who thinks they can't find time to write, hey, if you're rude and anti-social of course you can. And let me add that I did this work while a truly wretched series of remakes of halloween songs was looping on the sound system. I plugged in Aretha and managed to mostly drown it out while ignoring the kids and various trick or treaters. You take your time where you can.

Labels: halloween, Scandal, writing

I've always wanted to write that. And today is my big chance!

All righty. Got that out of my system. I'm exhausted. It's been a long day and for some reason I didn't sleep all that well last night. Sigh.. I worked on Scandal at the gym and right as I was in the midst of a huge reorg of material involving musical chapters and parts flying all over, my 45 minutes was up. I actually sat on the bike a few more minutes, dripping sweat all over the pages as I worked, but then realized I'd need twenty more at least to get through that so hosed down the bike and went to stretch out and do push ups and sits up before I showered. Sigh. Hopefully I can make some sense of it tonight.

I got a delightful email today from someone who read The Spare in Dutch! That was exciting. I'm so glad she emailed to let me know. Wish I knew what the cover looked like...

OK, off to work on Scandal and go to bed early I think, on this, the Eve of All Hallow's Eve.

Boo.

Labels: editing, flying chapters, Scandal

For good or ill, I'm on to Scandal now. I'm pushing through the read-through I was able to do only sporadically for the last 3 weeks or so. I have little memory of how things hang together with what I've read so far, but what I've read today isn't awful. I know I have a chapter to write. So, back to it.

Labels: Scandal, writing, writing fast

Magellan's Witch is off to my editor. I'm in a state of whatever right now. Just to give you-all a flavor of what it's been like, yesterday I decided that I should listen to the nagging voice that kept saying Carolyn, why do all the villains have Latino names? Answer? Because the names sounded cool. Santiago and Magellan. Totally cool names. But, still, that's one of those things that could be open to bad interpretations. So I decided to change one of my antagonists from Brazilian to Danish. This meant I could make my villain, Magellan, Brazilian! Brilliant! I said to myself. Now all the Portuguese lines can go to him. But that also meant I needed a Danish name.

Lucky me, my sister-in-law is Danish. So I called her up and said, hey, Christina, I need some cool Danish names. Anyone who's been put on the spot before can guess what happened. She could hardly remember her own name let alone Danish names for men. But my brother got on the internet and we got a quick list put together with Christina's help. Her brother, it turns out, had the absolute perfect name -- Peter Nikalaj. I would have used just Nikalaj, but I couldn't because my hero is Nikodemus. Rats!! I really liked Rasmus, but Magellan's first name is Ragos, so that was out. And since I have some quite unusual names, I needed a Danish name that seemed Danish without being TOO Danish. Hans, for example was out. I tried Henrik. Yuk. Did not work. Then I tried Jakob, but cool though it was, it didn't look right on the pages. So then I tried Iver and that stuck all the way until about two hours ago when I decided my Danish mage had to be Rasmus, and therefore Magellan was getting a new first name. He got Alvaro. So then when I did the search and replace for Iver 244 replacements. Wow, I thought. I had no idea I mentioned him so often. Um. No. Actually, I didn't. I merely neglected to select Whole Word when I did the replacement which meant for a time words like shiver became shRasmus. Oops. And I didn't even realize it at first.

Yikes!

But it wasn't too late and an undo fixed that and Iver became Rasmus and shRasmus went back to shiver. Then I had to reassign the Portuguese lines, only three or four, to Magellan and change my descriptions of Santiago to reflect that he was now Rasmus, the Danish mage. He went from black hair to white-blond hair. And that meant that my lady-fiend, Fen, who had white-blonde hair became a red-head, and that also meant, as it turned out, that her bra became red instead of black. Who knew?

And, also last night as I was falling asleep feeling smug about being done and needing only to transfer my very last edits (right) that damned little voice said, Carolyn, how come you're not listening when I tell you that you need to take Iskander out of Chapters 27-29 and put in your hero?

Rats. F-you little voice!

So today I also did that, but it was a really fast change and much easier, actually, than deciding on a Danish name for the mage formerly known as Santiago. But that change totally rocked. So then I spell checked everything, and made sure I didn't have any pages with one word on them or blank and I fought the good fight with Word. Have I maybe mentioned before how much I hate Word? and sent my MS to my editor.

One last little remark -- I have Word Perfect set up to convert /N to the word Nikodemus along with several other handy shortcuts, with the odd result that I can do longer spell my hero's name. And in fact, when I am not in WP, I'll type /n and sit there wondering why it doesn't change to Nikodemus.

On to Scandal.

Labels: Danish, Magellan's Witch, Names, Red Bra, Revisions

I think I'm done with revisions to Magellan's Witch. I got through it today without anything major. I'll put in the paper changes tomorrow and send it off. I need to get back to work on Scandal. Yikes.

Got pumpkins today. Carving tomorrow.

To bed now.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revisions, Scandal

I'm brain dead today. Some might argue that I am brain dead most days. Could be true. So here's a survey ... what's on your desk right now? Here's my quick list:

1. Monitor, printer, laptop in docking station


2. Vase of silk flowers


3. bills to pay


4. Mouse and mouse pad


5. The U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual


6. Headphones


7. Revision letter for Magellan's Witch plus MS


8. My cat Jake


9. Ceramic heart, painted red by my son, size of a quarter


10. miscellaneous crap. Not telling. So there. Also, I'm deliberately NOT looking behind the monitor. I imagine it's quite neat and tidy back there. Is so.


11. Really lovely art glass coaster.

FYI, my desk is really not big enough for all this stuff. But it's all there. Also, I think I'm going to get into bed with the MS for MW and start reading again. Although I feel tired enough to go to sleep right now.

Labels: Brain Dead

This is my 1,000th post. All the way from April 2001 to October 2007. That's six years of blogging. Allow me to step into my Way Back Machine. I was following the always fascinating Dave Winer and he was talking about blogging like it was the best thing since sliced bread. Hmm, I said. I think he's right. So I tried Radio UserLand, but (sorry Dave) it wasn't as easy as I needed it to be on the crappy equipment that I had. Full time job, very young child, and I think I was in grad school then, too. Plus the writing. But Blogger (before Google) was dead easy, so I did that and Dave was right. Blogger had some growing pains, but eventually Goolge bought them out and sent all the paid subscribers a free t-shirt AND later when things were NOT smooth a free Google hoodie. And I was extremely cute in my hoodie so all was forgiven.

And now it's today. 1000 posts later. Lots of writers blog now. Blogging is no big deal, but it's still fun for me. I like doing it. Happy 1,000th post Writer's Diary!


OK, reporting in. Somehow I made it through Magellan's Witch. There were three, make the four really truly ugly chapters. I cut one, rewrote another and wanted to slit my wrists over one just this afternoon, and then there's the one that I rewrote, and when I re-read it realized I needed to put most of it back the way it was because I'd actually made it worse not to mention totally boring. So for the first time practically ever, I went into my archives and pulled out the previous version and replaced the back 4/5ths with the old version. Today was brutal. Really. I was up until 11:00 last night, slept until 5:30 this morning(no gym, rats! but I needed the coherence of an extra hour's sleep) then skipped the lunch hour walk for the 3rd day in a row-- those poor guys I usually walk with think I hate them--- to sit outside by my car to read through MW. Then home to get my son to a soccer scrimmage. I sat in the car and worked... Then my sister picked him up to take him to my brother's for a birthday party for the twins, and I went home and worked on MW. The bit I thought was dreadful at lunchtime turned out not to be quite so bad. But I got through all the changes and have conformed everything I think. And since I told my editor I would have it to her in a week or so I decided what with discretion being the better part of valor and all, that I can email it Monday morning, thus giving me another weekend. And putting me behinder yet on Scandal. But that's a panic for another day.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, panic, Revisions

1) From the Romantic Times newsletter:

My big news this month is all about our upcoming Pittsburgh convention, April 16-20, 2008. We just received word that hunky Highlander Adrian Paul will definitely be there.

ohmygosh I can hardly breathe!! RWA is in San Francisco this year so will I have the money to finally go to an RT? Better question: I have a book due May 1, will I be able to take that much time off when a deadline is so close?

2) Is this the future of news delivery? NY Times River. Take a look. Make sure you click on the pluses to expand. This is from Dave Winer who pretty much brought us blogging and RSS. And now this. Expect what he's done here to start showing up in how content, particularly feeds, gets delivered and aggregated. And not just news. Neat.

3) ohmygod, I'm not quite done with revisions to Magellan's Witch. sound of whip cracking

Labels: Adrian Paul, Magellan's Witch, Revisions, technology

That pretty much says it all.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revisions

I finished the chapter revisions for Magellan's Witch. I have the thing printed out so I can read it through tomorrow for typos and other ickiness. I have lost all sense of the story at this point.

Going to bed.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revisions

Who's going to be voted the Sexiest Man Alive? This poll comes to you via the wonderful Diana Holquist. Naturally I voted for Other
because Adrian Paul wasn't listed....

Go take the poll. The world needs to know!

Labels: Poll

Still revising Magellan's Witch. I just chopped an entire chapter. Whack!

I'm trying not to freak.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revisions

But . . . Can I just say that even though I desperately want a Mac laptop and some day expect to own one, I have a developed a deep and abiding hatred for Quick Time and iTunes for Windows. See, apparently, Apple doesn't want you to have their QuickTime video player without iTunes. They bundle the two and they pester you if you manage to figure out how to get QT without iTunes. See, I don't own an iPod. I have a regular old, much cheaper, mp3 player. I don't need or want iTunes. But at least once a week Apple pops up an unsolicited message telling me I don't have iTunes and don't I want it? NO. Just f'n freaking NO. I can't make it go away. I'm not allowed to tell Apple to leave me alone with the iTunes crap. Why isn't that malware? Smells like malware. Acts like malware...

So, actually, there is a way to make it go away. I uninstalled QuickTime. Ah, the silence. It's lovely. Go away Apple. Leave me alone. Hah. Now you have to. You don't know about me anymore.

OK, back to work.

Labels: Apple, iTunes, malware, QuickTIme

Maybe I should say no more? Still revising Magellan's Witch. Not because it totally sucked, but because I'm only up to Chapter 19 of making everything conform to the actual revisions. Weekdays I don't get so much done, plus revisions require that I be at the computer, so there's really no sneaking it in during the odd seconds of time here and there. I've been doing that with Scandal, though. This morning at the gym, for example. I'm kind of hoping to do a paper read through of MW this weekend. And then MW has to be off my plate entirely. I have to freaking finish Scandal!

What else? Um, who the heck knows?

Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revising, Scandal

Still working on Magellan's Witch revisions. Making progress. What else? It's late, I'm tired. Nothing new. I'm just a revision machine.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revisions

This is my cat Jake, helping me revise Magellan's Witch. The bulk of the MS is at the bottom of the pic, but he's lying on the done pages from my last pass through last night when I was checking a things to make sure I'd hit all the specific pages. My work space isn't big enough to put the pages anywhere else. Fortunately, at the moment I can work around that. But he was helping me like that all day yesterday when I couldn't work around it. And he's a big, fluffy cat. Now it's on to the bigger picture items, which involves mostly making sure my previous changes are seamless to the rest of the MS.

Labels: Helping Cat, Magellan's Witch, Reviions

Right now, my cat Jake is asleep on my copy of the edited MS for Magellan's Witch. I wish I was him. Sleeping with no cares. He looks so comfy.

Anyway, I'm done going through the MS for the changes. Tomorrow I'll do a read through to make sure I've hit everything.

I slept until 8:30 this morning, skipped my RWA meeting, had to, rats. And worked from 9:00 to 3:00 when I had to take my son to his soccer game. I bought us pizza on the way home and have been working since about 6:30. I took a few breaks, once to scrub some paper off the windows (left over, I'm ashamed to admit, from when they were installed) and, no I DO NOT want to talk about why I so desperately needed to scrape old labels off the windows right then, and another break to make my son S'mores for breakfast. Yeah, I'm a Bad Mom. My son had chocolate, marshmallows and Graham crackers for breakfast. For a while I was frantically wracking my brain to figure out how to put my villain into this one scene and I swear, I was doing the patented Sandy Schwab Head: Desk move for way too long. Then I got up to pick up the dog and he licked me (ick! I wish he wouldn't do that) and suddenly I knew how to do it. So I went back and fixed that scene which was the last major fix, I think.

Now off to bed.

Labels: Bad Mom, Magellan's Witch, Revisions

Working on revisions for Magellan's Witch. I'm almost done with the initial pass through. Then I have to read it to make sure it hangs together still. I can't tell anymore.

It's started raining here and that means soon the grass will be a lovely green.

Off to bed.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revisions

Things are crazy right now. I'm working on revisions to Magellan's Witch while trying not to get too behind on Scandal. Yikes! Crazy. I'm going to have to skip my RWA chapter meeting this Saturday. Rats. Too late to get my money back. But I need those Saturday hours for writing.

Today, I went to the gym after work, with my binder of Scandal (How many people do you know who have a binder full of Scandal? I'd like to know!) and as I was pedaling away, even though I should have been doing resistance work, who did I see but the Gym Elf. Sigh. The Gym Elf, in case you don't know, is a gentleman of pulchritudinous attributes. Not sure if you can say that about a guy, but I just did so I guess you can. I used to see him all the time when I was working on the Dark Elf story, and he was my inspiration for the hero. Which is why I took to calling him the Gym Elf. Any way, it was nice to have a sighting.

OK, off to bed.

Labels: Gym Elf, Magellan's Witch, Revisions, Scandal

So, the darling child did not properly plan completing his homework and some projects that were due. The result is that over the last two days, chaos has reigned in the Jewel household. Mostly he's been good about not wasting time with hysterics about the unfairness of his teachers and how his poor planning is not his fault. Mostly because I looked him in the eye and warned him, in a very stern voice, that he didn't have that kind of time to waste and I didn't have the patience to listen to it. Tomorrow should be the last day of panicked work for him.

In the meantime, I managed, just barely, to keep my minimum words per day on Scandal, only today, my revisions came for Magellan's Witch. The changes center around two basic elements and I'm about 1/8th of the way through, I think. So, I think I'm going to print out Scandal so I can work on that during the odd downtimes and then work on MW at night. Arghh! Only tomorrow is Chocolate Mousse night after soccer practice...

Oh, also, I have to write a book review, I'll explain how that came about later, and also read a book for a blurb. Someone actually wants me to do that. Weird. I almost asked my agent if there was some mistake. But apparently not.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, On being busy, Revisions, Scandal

Last night I took my son, the Darling Child, to a French restaurant. He has to write a review for his French class. He did try escargot. He had a soccer game in the morning and then went over to a friend's house and jumped on a trampoline for 4 hours. And when I picked him up, we got a ride in a Porche. I want one.

Anyway, at the restaurant he was actually fading fast by the time we were having dessert. Today's soccer game isn't until 4:00 pm which means we both got to sleep in this morning. Yay! I didn't even open my eyes until 9:00 am.

When he got up he made me crepes, also a project for his French class. They were very good. Yummy. With only a few reminders, he even cleaned up afterward. Then he started on his science project. He's making a model of a cell. He's using clay and we ended up wrapping the clay in a paper bag and running over it with the car a couple of times to get it nice and flat. Which was just funny. Now it's out drying in the sun and he's working on his French reports. We went outside to check on the model, and in the sun, the temperature was perfect. Not too hot, perfectly warm after the slightly chilly inside. He threw the frisbee for the dog. In between all that, I've been able to get some writing done.

So here's the thing. I've had a wonderful morning. Perfect. Having children is a lot of work and sometimes it's just frustrating or even scary. But days like today make life perfect. Because in return for all the hard times and days when you want to put them in the closet or trade them in for a Porche you get days like this.

Scandal is still going well. I'm in edit mode. After I go shopping, and probably after the DC's soccer game, I think I'm going to work on smoothing out the ending. Right now, the parts where my hero and heroine are coming to terms with their sexual compatibility is fragmented and needs to be brought in line with everything else.

Labels: children, cooking, on being happy, Scandal

The writing went well tonight, too. Hit my minimum, and now I'm going to bed so I can maybe catch up on my sleep. The dog is asleep on the chair, curled up behind me and the big fluffy cat is on my lap. Kind of nice, but I'm having to sit with a very straight back so as not to disturb any one.

That's it. Kind of boring. Except for my impending sense of doom about the writing. Freaking a bit about deadlines. Urk.

In other news, my website redesign is going along quite well! Can't wait until it's in place.

Labels: Scandal, writing freaking writing

Moving right along. I went to the gym while my son was at soccer practice, then home etc. I exceeded my minimum tonight because last night I kept waking up to find myself dreaming about Scandal and that resulted in a proper ending for last night's chapter and a new chapter today. Mulled it over during the mental downtime of the day and then while I was waiting for practice to be over notebooked it a bit which meant I was prepared to write tonight.

I'm still kind of freaked that Scandal seems to be going well at the moment. I have to decide now if I go over earlier chapters and get them conformed to its new emotional tenor. I'm trying to avoid saying gravitas again, but I think that's the right word. I think that's the right thing to do because that way when I get to the back chapters I'll know exactly where they're headed and will have undoubtedly (Patti O'Shea, close your eyes now!!) ripped out, reordered and rewritten a good deal of the front two thirds.

Oh, boy. Ripping to shreds. I can hardly wait.

Labels: editing, ripping to shreds, Scandal

Scandal is going well and that's making me nervous. I wrote more than my minimum tonight but had to delete half an older chapter, so I'm only ahead a couple hundred words tonight. I have a bit over 60,000 words and that's typically critical mass. Now there's much more editing and a lot less first draft writing.

I've nailed down the gravitas of the book which is good. It means I can start editing with that in mind. I imagine over the next month, I'll be moaning and groaning about the pain of it all, but right now, I'm feeling OK about things and that makes me nervous. Tonight's chapter went especially well.

In cooking news, my son is going to be making chocolate mousse for family and his French class. And then crepes and ratatouille for us. My brother who has been a pastry chef for a fancy restaurant sent us instructions and gotchas that included warnings like if the chocolate isn't cool enough, it will seize up... I have no idea what that means. Turn into a lump in the pan? He advised us to practice, so tonight I helped the DC make chocolate mousse using cheap chocolate. We'll use the good stuff for when he's practiced enough. I don't think the chocolate seized up. We'll know tomorrow. I'm up first, so we agreed I get the first taste.

Labels: chocolate mousse, editing, Scandal

I had to go grocery shopping today because of Soccer-Mom weekend. Rats. I really hate that. One of my fondest desires is for food to magically appear in my kitchen... It does for everyone else in the house, I guess. So, I put on my headphones and some tunes and did my best to grocery shop without starting to sing. Let me set the scene a bit; at the market where I shop, the average age of the shoppers is about 85 I think. Harried moms are common, though. (Is there any other kind of mom?) Occasionally a college student sneaks in. Usually, they're in the liquor aisle. Or buying chips.

There I am in the produce section and I'm studying the the pineapples and singing under my breath. (I hope.) I'm smiling all dorky because I like the song etc. I look up and a twenty-something god is walking right past me. He's tall with dark hair and tanned arms, wearing a white short sleeved t-shirt with and carrying his basket high to avoid bonking some old lady in the head. He has muscles bulging all over the arm holding the basket. And it's obvious he's the kind of god who doesn't realize he's a god. He was looking at me because, alas, I'm pretty sure I wasn't really singing under my breath very well. I'm pretending he was thinking I'm hot for Soccer Mom singing dork. Wildly inappropriate thoughts flashed through my head. I think I was mentally worked up on account of Sunday we took the kids to see Game Plan in which The Rock displays a damned awesome physique. Trust me, there's no other reason to see that movie.

Anyway shopping today wasn't so bad.

Now I'm trying to work on Scandal. I had a great idea for a new scene pop into my head today. I'm going to rewrite a chapter to add that, but time's a wasting...

Labels: Scandal, shopping