My editor sent on the Revisions for Indiscreet and I am in the middle of them now, head down, fixing as fast as I can. Oh, and I injured my hand and for three days was in an exquisite amount of pain and having a lot of trouble just typing...

It's been ugly folks.

In fun news, don't forget to leave your comment in the post below so you can maybe win a free book! See post for details. You have until 4/10/2009. Go. Enter.

In other fun news, since my birthday is this month, I am going to cook up some fun stuff for us to do to celebrate my big day. Stay tuned. Fun stuff!!!

Speaking of cooking, my son has to make aioli for his French class. We followed the Joy of Cooking recipe yesterday and didn't even get defeated mayonnaise which, apparently, is what happens to losers who can't make aoili. We got soup.

It was a really really embarrassing cooking failure. Today we tried again. I took the liberty of stopping at Trader Joe's on the way home to buy aioli (mustard) as the Death Star Aioli Back up Plan. It's what Darth Vader would have done. Right? Cause he was like evil and stuff.

Soccer Boy and I agreed failure was not an option, as passing off Trader Joe's Aoili mustard as something home made was... well.... cheating. But still. I just couldn't see facing the humiliation of sending him to French class with a mason jar of failed aioli soup.

We started off correcting the known mistakes from yesterday. I had good olive oil, brand new. We need a freaking pair of pliers to get the damn olive oil open! Then I started freaking and made my son look up tips for fixing failed aioli on his iPhone which led us to a couple of recipes that contained better instructions than Joy of Cooking and well...

voila!

The aioli came out fantastique!

I am so proud.

Off to revise.

Labels: contest, cooking, death Star backup plan, free stuff, Indiscreet, Revising

Okay, I still don't understand how I can be so busy, but there it is. I have too much stuff to do. Of course, Mondays these days last until 6:30 pm when I am finally home to deal with stuff. I get home just in time to take Soccer Boy to his math tutoring thing because he's bored out of his mind in the Advanced math class. Great. At last, after the review stuff to make sure there weren't any skills he needed to brush up on, he's now working on stuff that they haven't done yet in his class. But really. In an advanced math class, why are any of the kids bored? They're supposed to be going faster. I am concerned about this. Anyway, after that, it's grocery shopping. Sigh.


Therefore, I admit right to you all that I am going to bed now. Well, right after I fold the laundry. Then I'm going to bed.

The machete work went well yesterday. That would be machete work on Indiscreet. I figured I should just start revising before I get the revision letter. I'll be that much further ahead. But not even the weed whacker tonight.

I need some sleep.

Labels: Indiscreet, Revising

Happy January 1, 2009 folks!

It's been a lazy day of doing not so much actually. The highlight pretty much has to be the hot chocolate I had, which I made with extra chocolate stuff so it was especially yummy. I did a lot of tweaking and revising then went out and took some pictures. Made my son dinner, and yeah. That's about it.

Then I discovered that My Wicked Enemy made The SciFi Guy's list of Favorite Urban Fastasy/paranormal Debuts which is pretty awesome.

Tomorrow I have to go to work. Sigh.

Now I'm going to get to the end of this one particular chapter and then watch some Shakespeare Retold. Much Ado About Nothing and if I'm feeling frisky and it's not too late, MacBeth.

Labels: futzing around, Happy New Year, Revising

As you may know, I'm doing NaNoWriMo and so far I am -21,000 words or so. Yeah. That's negative words. Cough Cough. That would be for The Next Historical.

The good news is it's never all bad news when you cut crap from your novel. Plus last night I was able to get myself above 60,000 again. I think I need to add one more chapter, but I have to spend some time thinking about exactly what needs to happen in it. In the meantime I'm reading through and editing as I go. I'm feeling a lot better now that I've removed all of the chapters that needed to go stay in the Trash Files, an all expenses paid vacation for Words That Are Not Right. Or maybe it's a Rest Home. Yeah, more like that. Or maybe it's more like an orphanage. Without the big pathetic please take me home with you eyes. They try, sure, the pathetic whiners. But it's important not to listen.

What else? Today was the last league game for the son's soccer season. They won league with a 2-2 tie. I wrote in the car before the game started, which is always good for lack of distraction. It was an awesome game, too. Both teams played good soccer. From now until January they practice for the big state-wide tournament. This means I have my weekends back.

Today I ate mostly cookies. I said I'd bring cookies to the End Of Season soccer party so I made the dough last night and cooked the cookies when we got home from the game. I'm afraid I did too much taste testing, though I can at least report that each and every one of the cookies I ate were excellent. I couldn't eat anything at the party because I was too full from the cookies. Which is a great diet tip only I think you're supposed to fill up on carrots and celery, not cookies. Whatever. It worked, didn't it?

Here's a random picture I took yesterday:



OK, off to write a few more words then I'm going to bed.

Labels: diet tips, editing, flowers, NaNoWriMo, Revising, writing

Halloween is my favorite holiday. Not because of the candy, which I shamelessly steal from my son, but because the kids have such a blast dressing up! Since we don't get any trick or treaters where we live, we go to my brother's where I adore adore adore!! giving out candy to the tykes.

My son and I finalized his ghost costume tonight. I'll try to get a picture tomorrow. And the pumpkins were carved and arranged in the vignette you see below.

Blogger is smooshing the original some so all I can say is the original is clearer that this. But at least you can see the handiwork of my son -- It was his idea to add the little dead pumpkin in the bowl. He and I agreed the big one looked nauseous and so needed the barf.

Have a safe and happy halloween!

P.S. The Next Historical is being knifed and shredded and the various bits reassembled, rejiggered and re-engineered to make a creature that is new and awesome to behold. I hope to soon be shouting to the belfry "it's alive!!" But right now, not so much. Right now, it's Frankenbook, frightening those who dare to look and sending the good Dr. Carolyn von FrankenNeuroticWriter into fits of chocolate overindulgence.

Labels: editing, Frankenbook, halloween, Revising, The Next Historical

In real life, I am only mostly right-handed. I do an awful lot of things with my left hand. I do sometimes write left-handed. Sometimes. Driving me with was nightmarish before I ponied up for a GPS. Now it's mostly amusing when I sometimes turn right even when the nice lady in the GPS says to turn left. (Recalculating is a frequently heard word...) Despite the big huge arrow on the screen.

It happens in my writing, too. I always have to be very very careful with my physical descriptions in case that left-right confusion sneaks in on me.

Today I had a bigger directional problem, related to my tendency to start out making things way too complicated. Example: The Next Historical opens in Syria. After first writing what I thought was the beginning (set in England) I realized I had to start in Syria, so I'm pretty sure the back half of the book is more or less written, subject to some massive revisions when I get back to it.

Anyway, I started everybody out in Aleppo, which is in Northern Syria near Turkey. Then, of course, it was still the Ottoman Empire and then I had my heroine and her father heading off to Iskenderun (Alexandretta) which is roughly 60 miles north-west-ish on the Mediterranean through, as it turns out, some mountains and the Syrian Gates where Alexander the Great defeated Darius and his Persian Army (hence the Alexandretta). Iskenderun is named after Alexander the Great.

So, as I was saying, my hero goes off to Maarat an Numan (spelling seems to be variable) and then goes to Iskenderun to meet up with the heroine after a fashion. Then they go back to Aleppo, and then some stuff happens and then they go back to Iskenderun because in order for my heroine to end up back in England with the rest of the book, she has to sail and Iskenderun is the only port in the province.

You see my issue. I have my characters going from Aleppo to Iskenderun to Aleppo and back to Iskenderun. Absolutely do NOT ask me why I didn't see how stupid this was before. Suffice it to say that today as I was sitting in the car at soccer practice the stupidity of all this back and forth finally smacked me.

So now I have to move everybody to Iskenderun at the start, then off to their various locations of castle ruins in Maarat An Numan and the suq in Aleppo, and THEN my hero goes to Aleppo and takes my heroine back to Iskenderun once and only once and puts her on a ship.

That should be an interesting fix not to mention a demonstration of my writerly super powers as I move entire houses 60 miles from their original locations. And then I will rename Aleppo to Fredericksburg or something, then rename Iskenderun to Aleppo and then rename Fredericksburg to Iskenderun. And move a bunch of descriptions from east to west.

Ta-dah! And the crowd goes wild!!!!

Labels: Revising, Superpowers, The Next Historical, writing

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