Things have been crazy here at Jewel central. I'm so close to the end of my revisions, I can practically taste it. Oh my. But my mom's been in the hospital so I've been a wee bit distracted. She's home now which is good.

Anyway. Craziness. Carry on.

Labels: Revisions

Saturday, I drove down to Sunnyvale, California, the heart of the Silicon Valley, to attend Donald Maass's seminar Fire In Fiction. I hate driving. I particularly hate driving to the South Bay because the freeways there were designed by a sadist. Even with the GPS I still confuse left and right and I sometimes still take the wrong exit. Driving is stressful for me. But I got up at 6:00 am on a Saturday and drove a hour and a half South.

I listened to Maass's 2009 RWA workshop on my DVD and heard enough in that 2 hours to think I'd really like to hear more about his thoughts. I was particularly interested because I know that in addition to being a top Literary Agent he's also been a writer. I've read his book Writing The Break out Novel and thought it was one of the more helpful writing books. For me. YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).

The seminar ran from 9:30am to 6:30pm and what a great experience it was. There was a lot of detailed analysis and explanation. I have pages and pages of notes and examples. I'm so glad I went. This was completely worth the money.

I now have several new and interesting ways to think about writing.

Never stop learning.

Labels: learning, Revisions, workshops, writing

Things were hopping for a while over here at Carolyn Jewel central.

Sidebar: The border collie is standing at my sliding glass door with her nose pressed against the glass begging to be let in. Normally I'd give in, but she's obviously been soaking herself in the pond and is completely wet and muddy. Sorry Patch. You're staying outside for a while!

I had revisions for Indiscreet which were due on an incredibly tight schedule. I ended up doing some major changes - in 10 days with an injured hand. Which is why I pretty much dropped out of sight for 10 days. But now they're done and my editor is very pleased. Yay! This was combined with some urgent projects at work... Oh gosh. Not a fun 10 days, at all.

Now I'm coming down from 10 days of high tension and sleep deprivation and beginning to relax a bit. I'm starting in on implementing the new website. If you want a preview, check out the blog (if you're reading in a feed) which has been skinned with the new design. I like it lots.

More later -- errands to run.

Labels: Indiscreet, Revisions

All right, so this isn't exactly about writing, but I'll get to that later. Late this afternoon, as my son and I were walking up the driveway after taking down the garbage, we met our neighbor High-Bob (to distinguish him from Low-Bob, the neighbor who lives below us). High-Bob was trying to flush a trout out of his water line -- to no avail. Apparently later on he'll need to hook up the compressor and basically blow the stuck fish out of the pipes. In the meantime, he mentioned that he had a big old mass of bees hanging off a tree behind his house. "Really?" I said. "Can we go look?"

So my son and I walk up to his house to look. Sure enough, there is a massive collection of bees about the size of two footballs end to end, hanging off the slender branch of an olive tree. Said branch looks to be in danger of breaking. That's a lot of bees. We went back to our house where I discovered that the local paper (publishes weekly) had just run an article about The Bee Lady, who has a farm and raises bees. The article talked about bee swarms such as High Bob's and how she will come and get them, and that quite often the bees die from the cold. Hives that get too big will split off.

I took her phone number to him and about an hour later, the Bee Lady was at his house. She had the whole bee keeper suit and a long cardboard box with a silver-dollar sized hole in one end. She also had an extra hat which she let me put on. Since it was evening, and cooling down fast, the bees were pretty quiet. I was able to get within five inches of this mass of bees. Oh my gosh.

Basically, she just kind of scraped the whole mass off the tree. (She estimated 35 to 40,000 bees) Most of the mass fell into the box, but not all, as you might imagine. The rest landed on the ground near the box. I had a few moments of wondering if I was going to panic as a few flying around bees landed on my mesh covered face, but I didn't because, they were outside the mesh. Pretty neat, I have to say.

With most but by no means all of the bees in the box with some slats for them to cling to, she put the lid on the box. Once the Queen is in the box, all the other bees want to be in the box with her, and the ones that aren't already inside go in through the hole in the end. That part took about 20-30 minutes. Small hole, lots and lots of bees. There was (are you ready for it?) a bona fide bee line into the box. Once or twice she took off the lid and scraped bees inside. They were actually very docile.

I learned lots of fun bee and non-bee related facts. Bees have a body temperature of about 92 degrees F, so they're pretty warm. This time of year Yellow Jackets are our friends because they eat insect larvae. Skunks are bee predators. Who knew? Later in the year, Yellow Jackets are not our friends. They puncture grapes and eat them and they drown in your coke for you to drink -- ICK!!!! So glad I don't drink soda.

Once the bees were in the box, she plugged the hole, duct-taped the lid on and carried the box to her car. The sound from the box was a vibrating constant buzzzzzzzzz.

She was happy to have High Bob's bees because a box of bees with a Queen costs about $95.00 and those boxed bees are, it seems, wimpy critters, having been coddled and what have you. Bob's bees are wild and acclimated to our climate and are much more robust. They will make good honey.

We intend to visit her soon and I intend to buy some honey. Also, it turns out she used to be a patient of my father's, I went to school with one of her daughters, and my son goes to school with one of her grand daughters.

In writing news, yesterday I sent off my two proposals to my agent who will then send them off to my editor unless there are any more tweaks. Today I got most of a The Great Revision chapter done today; all of a first pass and some good work on a second pass.

Labels: Bees, proposals, Revisions, writing

It's the weekend end and it will be a long time before the next set of holidays. Sigh

The last of my subrosa tweaks are in. I don't want to talk about it. But it's done and there's nothing more I can do right now.

Now I can read unabashedly. Indulgently. Massively. Which I will do for a darn good while, let me tell you. I will report in on my reading as I consume mass quantities.

Off to do just that.

Labels: reading, Revisions, sigh, tweaking

Today I cut 15,524 words from The Next Historical which entailed deleting 5 chapters and moving 4 others. I actually thought I'd have to cut even more, but as I looked at the deadwood, I figured out where some would go instead of to the Valley of the Lost Chapters, which helped solidify the beginning a lot. I think. Hope.

Also, tomorrow I will have a guest blogger, fellow Grand Central Publishing author Jeff Rivera Be on the look out for that!

Labels: cutting room floor, editing, Revisions, The Next Historical

The Next Historical is at a tad over 80,000 words. Normally, I'd say that's more or less done, just polishing left. But as I work my way through the chapters, writing new ones, deleting old ones, fixing the survivors, I feel like I am heading into a dark and very scary place.

There be monsters there.

Monsters in the form of really old chapters that don't reflect the current story. Which makes me feel like my actual word count is something more like 50,000 which is a panic number. Ack! Ack! Carolyn running around panicking

I continue forward into this unknown country from which this writer may never return, ready to fight monsters with my trusty... er... keyboard, delete, backspace, select-all delete, undo, redo, and

q w e r t y u i o p a s d f g h j k l z x c v b n m

(but not necessarily in that order, plus there will be lots of repetition of the little buggers, hopefully in new and sparkly combinations)

K. That's how I'm feeling. And now, for a quickie post of good news. In the next post. Not this one!

Labels: editing, Revisions, Word count, word whacking, writing

I revised at lunchtime in the car (because the day job has no lunch room and no conference rooms) then I came home, did stuff that needed to get done, whisked the son off to soccer practice and sat in the car and revised some more. Then I did more stuff that had to get done and now I'm back to revisions as soon as I post this. Well, just checking that I didn't create any new messes and cleaning up anything else I find.

Sigh

I'm exhausted because of Acheron and I have to get up at 6:30 or so because my son has a soccer tournament this weekend. Two games Saturday one Sunday, and then, depending on the outcome, possibly a championship game.

Off to revise.

Labels: His Wicked Witch, Revisions

I'm pretty much packed except for all the important stuff I forgot. Now just last minute chores so things aren't gross when I get back on Sunday.

I'm close but no cigar to being done with revisions for His Wicked Witch. I'm taking a print out with me to RWA for a final read through for continuity and egregious errors. Note to self: turn on the printer.

Although My Wicked Enemy isn't quite officially out, I know it's shipping from Amazon and that it's available in stores now. So, w00t!! Go get your copy now!

One more RWA-related comment then I'm off to finish getting ready:

It's in San Francisco. In July. Of course it's cold!!

I'll be blogging and twittering at the conference so see you on line!

Labels: His Wicked Witch, My Wicked Enemy, Revisions, RWA Nationals

I'm sitting here at Starbucks doing day job work. Right now files are transferring and I can't do anything until that's done. So here I am!

I've finished the copyedits for Scandal. I just have to make copies of the MS then get it into the mail. Now I'm starting in on the revisions for His Wicked Witch

All done with the day job stuff... Bye!

Labels: copyediting, His Wicked Witch, Revisions, Scandal

Just a quick post. As many of you probably know, RWA has its national conference in San Francisco July 30 to August 2. Which is soon. Really soon. (Yay!)

I have the copyedits for Scandal (due date: July 31) Snort. Real drop dead last day: July 28, because I head down there the 29th since the Beau Monde Conference is the 30th.

Today I got the revision letter for His Wicked Witch or whatever it ends up being called. Argh! I've only given it a quick glance to make sure I wasn't being asked to write a completely different book. No. Very good, there!

And, of course there's the WIP and today I didn't get a chance to work during lunch because I worked through lunch which means 0 words today. Panic is setting in.

Right so I'm really busy and may not be blogging too much between now and July 29 when I will be blogging and twittering the conference. Hopefully on my iPhone...

For now, I'll be twittering more reliably than blogging because that's easier, shorter and faster than blogging. Also you can't get carried away and keep writing some big old longer than you intended post.

In Carolyn's perfect world copyedits and revisions are done by July 28.

Wish me luck.

Follow me on Twitter

Labels: copyediting, His Wicked Witch, Revisions, RWA Nationals, The List

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

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

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

I'm trying not to freak.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revisions

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

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