Carolyn's Blog

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Done Gone and the Post Book Glow

All righty!! I've emailed Xia, which I have titled His Wicked Witch, to my editor. We'll see if the title sticks. So, I got in some last minute changes and now it's done and I can't do anything to the story until I hear from my editor.

What an odd feeling. I have Monday the 28th off, which I had thought to be spending in last minute panic. I'll be getting a massage and maybe a facial that day. Mmmmmm.

Then I went outside and took some pictures with my spiffy new replacement camera. There were three black widow spiders under a vat. Never mind how I found out. Some of the pictures came out good. I got the chills looking at the spider pics. It looks like I was much closer to them than I was.

I'm in the Post-Book Glow period and feeling a bit at sea. What to do with myself? Go to bed and read.

TBR pile, here I come...

Labels: writing, Xia

(4) comments

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

The Day After

Well, maybe not quite. I had a few tweaks for Xia, like thinking up a new name for a secondary character who will, I'm pretty sure, be a heroine eventually, if there is an eventually, and an issue with cleaning up a ruby ring that isn't what I originally thought it was. Both of which I did. Then I added in the glossary and I'm done for the night! I'm waiting to see if there's any feedback in re stuff that sucks or something. Then it's out the e-door.

What will I do with myself?

Read.

Get a LONG massage.

Fix some website stuff

Send out ARCs and bookmarks.

Entertain the Darling Child who may have decided My book is due May 1st!! is the only thing his mother can say. In a tense voice.

Labels: relaxing, Xia

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Monday, April 21, 2008

The Fork is Out!

Photo by
Amodiovalerio Verde

I have a few tweaks left, but I'm done. Xia rocks.

Tomorrow I'll be less giddy.

Labels: The fork is out, Xia

(2) comments

Friday, April 18, 2008

The Two Greatest Beer Names Ever?

Somebody just twittered they were having a beer called Lucifer's Golden Ale. Well, naturally, I immediately Googled it. And I found the two greatest beer names ever. In case you can't click over, they're Lucifer's Golden Ale and La Guillotine Ale.

Oh my gosh. You should click the link because the labels are wonderful, by the way.

Which one should I have my bad boys drink? Asahi Black, move over. You've been replaced by Belgian beers.

Back to work.

Labels: beer, Xia

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Thursday, April 17, 2008

Meet my friend Mr. Delete Key

Xia is just over 93K, but I'm not getting out the fork yet. I've finished my read back and fixed a lot of typos and other general clunkiness. I've started searching through the MS for words ending in LY. Most of them meet my good friend Mr. Delete Key.



Since I wanted to blog tonight I ended that at Chapter 17. Will finish that tomorrow, I hope. Then I have at least one chapter that needs some work. Then I guess a read through on paper and then I'll be pretty much out of time.

Sigh

Today I got my State tax refund and a royalty statement for A Darker Crimson which had an unexpectedly large check in it. Nowhere near enough to buy a MacBook Air, but it will finish paying for my son's braces.

Labels: editing, word whacking, Xia

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Sunday, April 13, 2008

Is Starbucks Evil? Plus Frisbee Flipping Dog

90,040 words now. Which for anyone who can do the arithmetic means I wrote 2040 words today. Considering how my day went, that's pretty amazing. I spent the morning finalizing some promotional material that's costing me a fair fortune. Got that sent off and I figured I had many hours in front of me to get through chapters 27-29 and fix the ending. Well, rats. The day job intervened and required that I drive into town for the wireless at Starbucks where I discovered that my favorite (least disliked?) local Starbucks had done something either very mean and nasty or very stupid:

They moved all the tables but one away from the power outlets. Yes, that's right. There was only one table and chair near a power outlet, and it was occupied. Along the wall where there used to be three tables by outlets were two big huge chairs and one tiny table too far away to reach the lonely outlets anyway (and occupied). On the other side of the place there were two big chairs by the windows with a little coffee table no one in their right mind would ever use a laptop on because you'd have to hunch over between your legs to reach the keyboard or else sit on the floor. Also occupied. The middle was wide open, but hey, no power! And my laptop for work gets about 45 minutes of battery life. So after realizing this, I left WITHOUT spending any money!! and drove to the Starbucks across town where they did have tables by the outlets. I spent money there. Fixed most of what was wrong at work (in the specific sense of SQL Servers) and then went grocery shopping.

I got home from that about 3:30 absolutely fagged because I am just not a person for heat, and it was 84 degrees. Yuck. I should have spent more time in the freezer section with the doors open. I bought a pineapple plus lot of strawberries because I told The Darling Child I'd make Strawberry shortcake and I've learned if I don't core the fruit right away by the time I get around to it, the fruit is in an advanced state of decay fit only for the compost or the chickens.

Then I had to shred my previous print out of the MS to make room in the binder for the new one I'll be printing out shortly, and that meant emptying the shredder before I could shred and since it's recycling day and the shredder was full again, I had to empty the shredder again.

So, then it was time to take down the garbage and the recycling and on the way back I stopped to talk to the neighbors for a bit, and the Border Collie came after me from the top of our driveway and then got all neurotic. She barks and growls at everybody until they throw a ball for her at which point she is their slave for life. Well, Ed had a frisbee in his garage and the only thing Patch likes better than a ball is a frisbee because she can flip a frisbee on her nose. This is hours of fun for her. She now loves Ed.

At which point it was 5:30 pm and time to start dinner. I called the DC several times only to be ignored so I started the strawberry shortcake without him. By the time he made it out to eat, the biscuits were cooking and he was very upset with me as it turned out he wanted to help make the dessert. Um, Darling Child, if you had come the first time I called you instead of 20 minutes later after the 3rd or 4th time, maybe the outcome would have been different.

So then I felt bad because he was upset enough to actually start crying (silently and trying to hide it) during dinner. Even though he should have come when I called him the first time to tell him I was starting the shortcake. Sigh.

So, I didn't sit down to write until nearly seven. But I doubled my minimum and got to my comfort zone of 90K words with time to spend on having the MS read back to me and some more serious editing.

Labels: words on the page, writing freaking writing, Xia

(2) comments

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Reporting in As ordered

Not really. But I am reporting in. Tonight I'm up to exactly 88,000 words for Xia. I'll feel better when I've cracked 90. That's pretty much done for me, which in this case means ready for more massive editing. The strange thing is I have only 29 chapters, and usually at this point I have 30-33. So I started looking for chapters that were 14 or more pages since for me that's a chapter that's too long. But there weren't any. What I have is a lot of chapters with 11-12 pages. Not long enough to need to chop in half. So, maybe this book will end up with fewer chapters than usual.

What else? I have some writing related have-to-do stuff that I really have to get done tomorrow that isn't writing Xia.

Thursday, I got ZIP writing done. My son fell in P.E. and bloodied himself up enough that he had to come home. My dad went to get him so I didn't have to leave work. But I talked to him on the phone and once I was sure he was mostly OK, told him to work on his English project, which was due Friday. He needed to create a facsimile of a newspaper page containing articles about some short stories they read. When I got home, had he done any of that work? No, he had not. And he's a terrible speller and well, it was 9:30 before the project was done, assembled and mostly error free. Friday, I was going to give him a lecture about how disappointed I was that he hadn't had the time to do his best work. Only he starts telling me how when he turned it in the teacher said that if it didn't contain a lot of spelling errors, it looked like A work to her. Dang you, teacher! And that she would show his to all the students who complained about not getting an A on theirs. So, no lecture.

Any way it's my usual sign off tonight. I'm tired and going to bed.

Labels: writing freaking writing, Xia

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Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Still alive, mostly. Rant Alert, too. Sorry.

Still working on Xia. Right now, it's going a bit slower than I'd like. Yesterday I cut some stuff, I think only temporarily, but I haven't found its new home yet, and then rearranged some chapters which worked out really well, actually. I'm always glad (even when I have to remind myself of that) when I cut words that don't pull their weight. I did some of that yesterday and tonight, but wrote a bunch of new ones.

And, let's see, yesterday I tried to buy one of Harlequin's Spice Briefs (sorry, no URL I'm too tired to find it) because my awesome friend Alice Gaines wrote one and I seriously wanted to read it. I couldn't. I had no idea their e-commerce site was so awful. Wow. They're really not doing themselves any favors. Not only do they not take all types of payments (No PayPal? No Discover?? Huh?) but it doesn't work. Limited formats, too. But the part that got me frosted was the DRM. No Printing. What?? If I'd been able to complete the transaction (which I was not) I wouldn't be able to print it, stick it in my binder of ebook goodness and read in bed. OK, so that's pretty dumb, but I don't think your average buyer is going to print it out and then copy it for all their friends. But I get that HQN is dumb about this. Most trad publishers out there are about this. But there's also no reading aloud. WTF!??

So, I assume what they mean is if you're vision impaired and want to have your text reader read it for you, no go. How stupid and anti-Americans With Disabilities is that? Isn't that limitation illegal? That also means I wouldn't be able to invite five friends over and read the story to them. Why not? I can invite those same five friends over to watch a movie. That's not illegal yet. If I want to read a freaking book out loud to my friends, I can. What if I want to read out loud to myself? Like they could stop me. What about people who move their lips when they read? What if they accidentally whisper? Are the HQM DRM police going to come over and put them in jail? Can't we outlaw annoying cell phone conversations first?

In short, HQN has stupid and probably illegal DRM on their ebooks. They only offer three formats. There's about 10 people with Mobi readers. Wouldn't it have been smarter to turn down the marketing bucks from the Mobi people and offer more formats? AND they have a shopping cart application that is flat out broken. AND they only accept two methods of payment.

Ellora's Cave takes PayPal. They offer I think 5-6 formats. No DRM that I've ever seen. I print them out in a two pages per sheet small font, duplex and save them to read in bed. I've probably spent something approaching $100.00 of EC hotness. I have spent $0 on HQN. Which publisher do you think is laughing all the way to the bank?

And worst of all, I couldn't read Alice's story.


I'm tired. off to bed.

Labels: Rant, writing freaking writing, Xia

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Saturday, April 05, 2008

The End is Nigh

Did more fixing of chapters 27 and 28. Mostly 28. Tomorrow, I think I'll print it out and start from the beginning.

Tired.

Going to bed.

Labels: writing freaking writing, Xia

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Friday, April 04, 2008

No fork yet, but....

Today I hit 80,383 words for Xia, after chopping much of the current last chapter and rewriting it completely. (My contract sets out a word count of 85-95K, but I'm never done until I'm between 90 and 95K) All the rest are brand spanking new words. Carolyn like shiny things! For the last four days I've been see-sawing between 78 and 79K. Cut some stuff, write some stuff. Cut more stuff, write more stuff. But tonight I have not only the ending roughed out, but a tentative title in place.

I also substantially redid chapter 27. Mostly it was total carnage. I think there's like 5 words left from the original chapter 28 and 10 left from chapter 27. But they're a really good Five and Dime. (Joke!! I made a joke -- does anybody get that?)

Right. What else?

Um, I signed up for a Twhirl account (what is it with these Web 2.0 names?) and got my twitter stuff on my desktop. And I learned that while I was writing and rewriting, a lot, and I do mean a lot, of people were watching TV. And twittering about it, obviously. Kind of blew my mind. So, right now, every aspiring writer should be swearing off TV. Because while you were doing that instead of writing, I was getting myself inches from meeting my deadline with time to spare.

What do you want? To write the book of your heart (because there's no point to writing any other kind) or know what happens on Battlestar Galactica tonight instead of later after you've hit your minimum? Just pointing that out there.

Of course if you are a writer who is procrastinating, that's a time honored method of building up the appropriate level of panic to get your butt stuck to the chair. By all means, watch TV. But if you don't have a deadline, TV is probably a bad thing for your writing.

Off to bed.

Labels: writing freaking writing, Xia

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Thursday, April 03, 2008

Chugging Along

Working madly on Xia, of course. Have thought of a possibly lame title. I need to push on, so back to work. Just letting you-all know I'm still alive. Sort of.

Labels: writing freaking writing, Xia

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Monday, March 31, 2008

Catching up is hard to do

I've been writing madly. The weekend required the machete. Today required the weed whacker. I fixed chapters 21 and 22. Tomorrow I go in after chapter 23, which is either in the wrong place or a mess. I'm not sure which. I have 79.2K words. Close enough to 80K to feel relatively less panic stricken. I still have no last chapter, but then until I finished fixing stuff, I won't know for sure what's right for the last chapter.

I've heard some preliminary feedback from one of the big Chains (starts with a B) on My Wicked Enemy enough to turn my head. So, all good there!

Also in the good news department (bear with me, it doesn't start out that way) last night as I was falling asleep after wrestling with chapter 21, I realized the chapter needed to end a different way. Then, this morning I hauled myself out of bed at 4:25 am, etc, and stopped for gas on my way to the gym. It was then 4:50 am. E.G. Cold and Dark. I did not have my purse with me. This makes it hard to pay for gas. I got home at 5:03 am, changed my shoes and did 30 minutes of driveway torture instead of biking at the gym and writing out my fixes to chapter 21. During said torture, I finally got a glimmer of an idea for the historical due in November. Yay!

At lunch, I worked on it, finished when I got home and then fixed 22.

So, I'm in a pretty okay mood.

Off to bed. Chapter 23 awaits me. I have the machete if needed. Tremble in fear, Chapter 23.

Labels: historical project, My Wicked Enemy, writing freaking writing, Xia

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

Freak Out! Get a Bookmark, too.

I'm writing like mad. Things are going OK with Xia. Doing a combo-read through and edit. So far no disasters. The machete has stayed in the closet. I need a title for the book though. A few ideas have occurred, mostly lame ones. My Wicked Lover, A Wicked Kiss. Good gosh, I need ideas and have none. Help!!!

In other news, I heard from my editor at Berkley on Scandal which I was panicking about since I'm in the home stretch of finishing Which Wicked Witch Kidding!! and was having nightmares about revisions coming at the same time I'm in the last days of finishing the Work In Progress. (WIP). And, yay! She loves Scandal and has no revisions for me.

I got a wonderful cover blurb for My Wicked Enemy from author Lara Adrian who writes the awesome Midnight Breed vampire series. I don't know if it's okay to share the blurb here, but if I find out it is, I will share.

My bookmarks came for My Wicked Enemy. If you want one, and really, how could you live without one? send me an email with your name and mailing address in it.

Back to work.

Labels: My Wicked Enemy, Scandal, writing freaking writing, Xia

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Sunday, March 23, 2008

I'm baaack!

Back from visiting my brother and his wife in Santa Barbara. We had a great time, even though I did, sadly, lose my camera somewhere in the SB mountains. Rats. So I do not have any great photos of breathtaking views, although we saw many such views and I'm sure at least some of my pictures were great.

Other than that, I cut a chapter of Xia. Sigh And got up to about chapter 8 or 9 I think on a read through. Which considering that I was doing family visiting stuff, isn't too bad. Most of that got done in the car on the way there or the way back.

Had to give the Fudgester a bath when I got home. He'd rolled in something v. smelly. Of the not so recently dead variety. He has forgiven me, I think.

I'm in full freak out mode and tired. Back to work.

Labels: cutting room floor, editing, writing freaking writing, Xia

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Thursday, March 20, 2008

With a Wave of my Magic Wand...

I would make writing easier, that's what I'd do.

I have a chapter that needs some TLC, so I am fixing it in between finding something, anything! to distract me from actually doing it. Only I am doing it. It hurts. It's agony and then something interesting starts to happen on the page and I conveniently forget all about the mess further down. Fixing fixing fixing.

Tomorrow, my bothers, my sister, me and all the kids are going to visit our other brother and his wife in Santa Barbara. Her mother and brother are here from Denmark, so we'll get to meet them. Hopefully, we won't horrify them too badly. Apparently it's snowing in Denmark and in SB, it's Spring. They're enjoying that. I'm not packed yet, but then I'm waiting for laundry to finish. Speaking of which...

Ahh. I have on my jammies now, still slightly warm from the dryer. I am now partially packed.

Back to work. Then I'm going to print off the MS so I can work in the car on the way down. I am not a primary driver in this escape to the South, I will be in the navigator's seat.

Labels: writing freaking writing, Xia

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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Backward Progress Today

Xia is still going well enough. As long as we're all pretending that writing is something that ever goes well enough. It's very hard work, and today I did hard work cleaning up crap. So, although I am down about 150 words to 72.6 something, I am able to see a silver lining to being in the red, word-count wise. Namely, that I have reduced the craposity and increased the goodosity. Aren't we lucky I'm a wordsmith? Oblige me and do not answer that question.

But I'm starting to freak about not being further along. More words. I need more words.

With that, I'm off to bed. Because more words requires enough sleep which I did not get last night.

Labels: panic, writing freaking writing, Xia

(1) comments

Sunday, March 16, 2008

What a load of horse manure!

I'm blogging early because I've been a writing slug today. Which means I will be writing late tonight and that means if I leave the blogging for last, I'll be too tired or else I'll blog anyway and be too tired tomorrow. Take your pick as to which is worse.

Yesterday I had to get new tires on the car. Oy. Money flying out the wallet. So sad. Today I had a flat tire. Sigh. The bright side is I discovered this while I was at home. So I called AAA to make them come and change it -- got my money's worth for the membership at least. The tow truck was so big he almost took out one of the posts down at the gate. The plan was to put on the spare (duh) and then my dad would take the flat NEW tire to the car place tomorrow allowing me to go to work in the morning as per usual and stop off afterward to do the switcheroo. This plan confused the AAA man who was otherwise pleasant and jocular. He tried to put the tire in the back of my car anyway. Then he wanted to put the tire in my dad's car. But, as I said, "My dad's truck is full of horse manure right now, so just leave the tire there (me, pointing) and we'll move it later." Seeing as how he didn't want to go near a truck full of horse manure, he allowed that our plan was okay after all. He moved the tire to the side of the driveway and managed to get his behemoth truck turned around and all the way down the drive without taking out the gate.

That was our big excitement today. AAA man scared by truck full of horse manure.

I have 70K plus words for Xia. I'm working up to the planned 3-way with Kynan, Xia and Alexandrine which I'm quite interested to know how that works out. There's only one way for me to know; write it. Rats.

Off to work.

Labels: writing freaking writing, Xia

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Thursday, March 13, 2008

Thoughts on Freebies

Today I was at a Microsoft product launch in San Francisco. I now have some idea of what SQL Server 2008 has to offer (a lot it seems) and some expensive software; Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 -- latest release candidate (kind of like an ARC), and Windows Vista SP1. All free.

Why give away very, very expensive software? (SQL Server is typically $10-19,000, depending on how you license it. Can be cheaper, but not a wise choice in the Enterprise.) Well, because the kind of people who go to such events are typically the very people who will show their comrades in geekdom the cool stuff they can do. And they will tell their friends they have Vista. Probably a very good investment. It will lead to more sales down the road.

So, writers do have giveaways. But do they do enough, and do they (we) give away the right stuff? I have all these ARCs. Should I be giving them away to readers or reviewers?

All righty, I'm tired because I had to go to SFO and back today. But, then, I was right down the street from the Marriot where RWA will be, and I can tell you, it's going to be totally awesome there. I remember in NYC, downtown Manhattan was SHUT DOWN over the weekend. DEAD. This will not be the case in San Francisco. That city is hopping with fun stuff to do within easy walking distance.

I managed to get Xia back to 69K even thought I deleted a lot tonight.

off to bed.

Who wants an ARC and what are you willing to do for one? Email me. Or leave a comment.

Labels: free stuff, RWA Nationals, Xia

(0) comments

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Uh oh. I thought I had something to say!

I made back the 1000 words I cut yesterday. I rejiggered chapters 12-15 which were all in the wrong order and started writing the new bits. Alexandrine is turning out to be quite the interesting woman. First off, which I may have mentioned, it turns out she's a former teen drug addict. Second, she has no problem whatever taking action to get what she wants. And she wants Xia. Today at lunch time, she got in the shower with him.

I'm trying to think of a Romance in which the sexually assertive one is the woman. I know there are some. But not so many. Most of those women are Evil Exes or just Evil. That's always bugged me, so I'm happy to be writing a heroine who takes charge of herself without de-alphabetizing the hero, too. (Xia loves it, by the way.) Especially since all my heroines start out their lives as total wimps. This is my writing challenge.

Anyway, I'm in the middle of The Ritual scene which, I am happy to report, does not end at all the way Xia and Alexandrine hope.

Labels: writing freaking writing, Xia

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Monday, March 10, 2008

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

That was me today. Rowr! Chapters 12 and 13 completely turned upside down and backwards. I made a trash file for the first time with this puppy. As Xia would say, Boo hoo, you effing witch. You did what had to be done. So f*ck that. or something a lot like that anyway. He's out somewhere up to no good, or I'd ask him.

Still, I'm only in the hole a thousand words. More R&S tomorrow though.

To bed for me.

Labels: editing, ripping to shreds, Xia

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Sunday, March 09, 2008

Tomorrow will be heck

I dislike this time change. 'Nuff said.

Today I futzed around with Xia all freaking day and then I ran into two confusing chapters and had to figure out what to do with them. I think I did. I reworked so much stuff my head is spinning. I have 69K which is OK, I guess. I was hoping for more but fixing crap involves the liberal use of the delete key. I'm up to chapter 13 in the fix-fest. Right now I'm re-doing a chapter from Xia's POV because at the moment, there are far too few chapters from his point of view.

What else? Nothing. I still have no title, wicked or otherwise, for this book.

Sorry this post is so dull.

Labels: writing freaking writing, Xia

(1) comments

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Friday!!!

Tomorrow is Friday. Yippee!! Xia is still coming along. I have 66K words now. A goodly amount. Can I be at 70K by the end of the weekend?

My agent has been nicely nudging my historical editor for revisions on Scandal. They better come soon given the May 1 deadline for Xia. I'm told they are. Also, my Berkley editor sent me a cover (not mine!) by the guy she'd like to use to do the cover for Scandal. He's a wonderful artist. That was pretty exciting, actually.

I now have my artwork-only jpg for My Wicked Enemy which I need for bookmarks and I have my preliminary order in. I'm on the fence about a book trailer. Does anybody know if they make a difference? Readers, do you like them? Do you care? Does anyone have hard figures on what the ROI might be?

It has occurred to me that it would be nice to have a title for Xia. Probably with the word Wicked in it. I have no ideas right now. Wicked Tired?


Off to bed.

Labels: My Wicked Enemy, Scandal, writing, Xia

(2) comments

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Literary Twister

Last night, this morning at the gym and during various downtimes of the day, I've been mulling over this particular scene that Just Wasn't Working the way it needed to. It involves Xia giving Alexandrine a substance that affects people with magic. Originally, he did it to prove to her she has magic. But the new! Alexandrine already knows that. Obviously, that original scene needed a re-write. While notebooking at the gym, I settled on her taking the pill by accident. I recognized the idea was a wee bit lame, but I thought if I meditated on it some more, I'd see my way to the solution. I am not at my best at 5:00 a.m.

So I sat down to do the work this evening and I was in there with the machete getting things conformed etc and at last I get to the substance scene at the end of chapter 6. How is she going to take this pill?

She's not. It turns out, as I was writing, that, as a former teen runaway (which was previously established) she had issues with drugs and does not take any drugs ever anymore. Color me surprised! But this revelation ended up being a major development in their relationship. Oh! Oh! I get it! Neat-o.

But now I had a chapter 7 of substance-induced events that needed a new home. And I knew the perfect place for it. Between chapters 13 and 14. The beginning of 14 got spliced onto the top of chapter 7 which was renumbered as Chapter 13 (with 8-13 becoming 7-12) Are you following me here? and then about-to-be 13 and 14 were temporarily combined so I could look for the best chapter ending. Found it. Chopped it. And Voila as they say in France. Chapters 7 and 14 were spliced and split and became 13 and 14. It's a bit messy yet but tomorrow I will smooth that out into a scene that has my heroine who is afraid of backsliding on drugs facing the ABSOLUTE NECESSITY of taking a drug that humans with magic routinely abuse... See? Much more at stake.

It's like that game Twister. Only with words and paragraphs and my characters and story instead of people.

This sounds like a horror show, I know. I suspect it is, but that's how it's been for all my books so far. I have an advanced case of esprit d'escalier only since these great ideas have to do with a novel which takes a while to put together, I can actually go back with the perfect bon mot and nobody will ever know I didn't think of it until way late.

I have to do this kind of slice and dice very quickly because I often need to have 3 or 4 chapters all in my head as I reassemble and sort out the bits and put the left overs in the right places, and I don't want to forget who's going where. If I go too slow or think too much every thing just goes to heck. It's scary because in the middle every thing's a bit fat mess, and I get in there and muck about and then it's all better. Usually. To be honest, sometimes it's not and I have to start over. But this one feels good.

Labels: editing, Pantsing, writing freaking writing, writing process, Xia

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Monday, March 03, 2008

I have ARCS! Now what?

Xia seems to be going pretty well so far. I've been chipping away at my Stuff To Do list. I have a problem with avoidance behavior. Sigh. At least I know I have a problem, right? Today, I requested the vacation time for Comic Con in San Diego -- Looks like I'll be signing My Wicked Enemy there (don't know what day yet). I'm planning to fly there and back on the same day. Hope that works. I also threw in the vacation time for RWA. So that's done. I also emailed my editor about getting the artwork for my cover so I can do bookmarks and maybe a book trailer. But I haven't done any of the BIG stuff on the list and I just don't want to talk about it. I'm procrastinating, thank you very much.

Now I need to figure out where to send my ARCs. I know where one is going. That leaves 13 others. Some to on-line reviewers, but which ones?

I also need promotion ideas. I can't afford any of the cool ones I'd like to do and I lack the talent for a DIY. Not to mention lacking the time. The issue for me is I've never heard any one say the things writers commonly do are known to work. Does MySpace actually sell books? Dunno. Do contests sell books? Dunno. I have minimal and anecdotal evidence that bookmarks work. Book trailers? Dunno.

What makes me buy a book? There are 2 big reasons:

1. I love the author


2. People are talking about the book

That's pretty much it.

If I'm browsing in a bookstore:

1. I know the author


2. People are talking about the book


3. The cover art or title is interesting which makes me read the back blurb, and that sounds neat

Nothing on either of those two lists is anything I can do something about.
I'm wretched at promotion. But mostly I'm impacted for time. Ok, I guess I can do something about letting people know what my books are about. MySpace may actually be good for that.

Off to work on Xia some more.

Labels: My Wicked Enemy, promotion, Xia

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Sunday, March 02, 2008

Good Stuff Bad Stuff And Stuff In Between

I've been reading through Xia and conforming things to the new! and improved Alexandrine. I've had to rip out some stuff, but I've replaced it with even better stuff, so I'm happy. The story is complexifying in ways that I like. A lot. For a while I was worried that Kynan was taking over, but he's not. Xia is a totally hottie bad boy. I'm up to Chapter 7 and I'm not depressed yet. That is A Good Thing.

Another thing is I read Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dream Chaser this weekend. Boy, did I love this one! Xypher was a fabo hero and there were some very sweet moments. That's another Good Thing, unless you feel inclined to point out that I should have been writing.

My son went fishing with my bother and his kids today, and I went grocery shopping and then came home and futzed around with MySpace and you know, important stuff. Had to pay bills, too. And fight Jake the Cat for space on my chair. Just when I was about to look at Xia, my sister-in-law called to say they were on their way back from fishing and since my son also had soccer tryouts again today, I had to go do that. Perhaps mostly A Bad Thing here.

But at soccer tryouts, I sat in the car and worked on Xia. Afterward it was so spectacularly beautiful out, I took the boys (my son and a tryout-mate I was giving a ride home) to get frozen yogurt. On the way home from that my son's friend asked my son if he'd finished the math homework. Dead silence. Uh oh. Shall I mention this is a project the teacher gave them two weeks to complete? So, a Good Thing for me, yet a Bad Thing for my son, which factors out to A Thing In Between.

Then I fed the Darling Child leftovers and made cookies and I didn't eat a single one! This is a massively Good Thing.

Also, I learned from looking at an ad my publisher sent me that My Wicked Enemy will be out at the same time as Sherrilyn Kenyon's Ash book. This is me, hyperventilating about Ash. Squeeee!!! Ash is going to fall in love and show us all his massive, um... uh oh this is going in a bad direction ... love making skills! Good save Carolyn!. But let us all hope that everyone decides to throw in My Wicked Enemy while they're getting Kenyon's book.

Now I'm going back to work on Xia.

Labels: My Wicked Enemy, procrastination, Xia

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Thursday, February 28, 2008

Random Thoughts. Or Something.

Today for Xia's story I fixed almost all the Kynan stuff AND I hit 58,747 words. So, even though it's likely tomorrow I'll delete a bunch since I stopped right before the place where's he's sitting with the folks in Oslo, I'm happy to say that he's developing a character! It was interesting to look only at the chapters that are in his POV.

Today was another beautiful day. 75. Blue skies. Really, really lovely.

Aside: don't you suppose that if you'd decided to write a novel set in, say, Elizabethan England, that it would go without saying that you actually like the period enough to be on more than a know-the-name only basis with the major figures of the time? I mean, wouldn't you expect such a person to know more than there was this Shakespeare guy wrote some plays and some of them were funny? Wouldn't you think such a person would, in fact, be such a dork for the period that they might have at least thought about reading some Shakespeare? Just wondering.

Labels: historical figures, Kynan Aijan, weather, Xia

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Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The Un-Do Plot Button

Today was another gorgeous day. It was almost cruel having to go outside at lunchtime because going back inside was torture. If this keeps up, I'll be putting away the sweaters much too soon.

Worked on Xia tonight. I think I'm just about at the last chapter before the end. But I have some earlier chapters to rewrite. I had a pretty cool idea about what to do with a major secondary character. Originally, I sent him off to Olso so that he would be far away and unable to interfere, which at that particular point in time he was doing. Take that you interfering character you! I'm sending you to Oslo! Then in the following chapters, while he was in flight apparently, I inserted another character because of some stuff I needed to happen. I used Iskander, the same poor guy I wrote out of earlier chapters (chances are you-all see where this is going... well, I didn't. Not until recently) and then suddenly realized a day or two ago that I needed to write him out again and substitute Kynan again. Only Kynan, for crying out loud, was in Oslo which is, as you may know, pretty far from San Francisco, Berkeley and Tiburon, where the story is set.

And yes, for a while I was trying to figure out how on earth Kynan would get from Oslo to Tiburon in time. Some times I am a complete idiot. It's a story. I make it up. If I mistakenly send someone to Oslo, even if it is First Class, I am at complete liberty to unsend him. No flue powder necessary.

At last, that brilliant idea occurred to me and voila. Kynan was never in Oslo. Instead he's somewhere else not so far away, misbehaving as it turns out. But now I have a chapter where he's sitting in Oslo, with some folks who are there, and I confess I was momentarily panicking because-- well, I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say I will be completely rewriting this chapter with heavy use of the Un-do Previous Plot button. The icon, in case you're interested, looks like the back of my head. I think that's where all my brains leak out.

I'm told my ARCs are ready for My Wicked Enemy which means people are going to be reading it. Holy crap!

Labels: ARCs, My Wicked Enemy, plotting or the lack thereof, Xia

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Monday, February 25, 2008

Monday and Stuff Like That

OK, so I won't bore you with the usual litany about Mondays. Insert our own if you want to.

It was a beautiful day, though. Perfect weather, which was nice after that recent storms. Daffodils! And by the way, I had out go outside in the rain this weekend to get pictures where the light didn't wash out the yellow. I'm still having trouble getting them just right, but, still. They're daffodils!





I'm up to 54.3K on Xia's story. I want to be at 60K by the end of the month. And I want to have a complete draft by end of March so I have April to get it read and massively fixed.

Off to bed.

Labels: flowers, writing freaking writing, Xia

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Saturday, February 23, 2008

Well, golly! Taking a moment to bask

Today I noodled about all day, pretty much, working on chapter 23 of Xia's story. So I was worried that I'd missed my minimum, despite working A LOT on the chapter. But I didn't. In fact, I was only a couple hundred words away from doubling my minimum plus exceeding 50,000 words. So I took a look at chapter 1 and noodled around there long enough to more than double my minimum PLUS discover the chapter rocks. I rewrote the chapter for the new Alexandrine and I have say, it works massively.

So, I'm basking in the glow, insecure in the knowledge that I will be ripping things to shreds shortly and will need to look back at this moment so as not to totally despair.

Also, note to Patti O'Shea: Do NOT stop blogging. I love your blog. I need to hear about your day and your characters talking to you.

Off to bed.

Labels: Word count, words on the page, writing freaking writing, Xia

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Thursday, February 21, 2008

A lap is only so big, you know...

It's been raining off and on today with the result that my lap has been in high demand. My cat Jasper is small and he fits very nicely on my lap. Jake, however, is big and fluffy and he does not fit so nicely. Plus, he's a pig (not a real one of course, he is a cat.) and when he's curled up behind me, he's always trying to push me off the chair. And then there's the Fudgester who, on nights like this, wants me to hold him. I can only type one-handed for so long. And yet, I managed to double my minimum today.

Xia has been successfully kidnapped and rescued along with another character. I have 23 chapters and and 48,656 thousand words. I think I might actually be at critical mass, except I haven't deleted very many chapters, which is worrying me. I have a lot of cleaning up to do. I have to move one of my hot scenes or maybe write one, to a different spot and then conform my heroine to the character she's becoming. Which means substantially changing another hot scent because, as it turns out, she's more of an adventuress than I originally thought. There's certain things that don't bother her! Anyway, I think the basic story is in place now. The other 10 or so chapters will magically appear (I wish!) when I split off chapters that get too long as I rewrite the heck out of this young puppy. The last scene I save for, well, last. I've learned that for me, it's pointless to write it until after I know everything else. Which comes dead last.

Labels: on laps, writing freaking writing, Xia

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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Astronomical Events

We've had rainy weather this week so I didn't think we'd be able to see the eclipse of the moon tonight but things cleared up, like magic! It was spectacular. Not reddish like the last two but still quite lovely. It was sad, though, to see so many city lights where there never used to be any. Rats. And the neighbors, who don't really know how to live in the country, keep on too many lights, and too many bright ones at that. You don't need 100 watt flood lights outside. It's disruptive to wildlife for one thing. It's wasteful and just plain light pollution.


At least on the other sides of the house if we get all our interior and exterior lights off it's possible to see how incredibly starry the night sky is. Amazing.

I have my minimum done for Xia and I'm heading off to bed early. I need to finish my RITA reading.

I'm pleased to report that Xia has at last been kidnapped and Alexandrine is on her way to rescue him. Yay!

Update: Went outside so the Fudgester could do his business, and I could hear the frogs and toads plus the owls. It was lovely. Not just a frog or two, but hundreds, quite possibly thousands, which is good because the last two years there were hardly any. And that's just wrong. I love listening to them. Not to mention the owls.

Labels: lunar eclipse, writing, Xia

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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Arghh!! Or is it Sigh?

I've got a bad case of Writer's Itch. Otherwise known as Inspiration. I think. Sometimes Inspiration feels more like a dump truck full of work.

Right. So dinner's all done. Speed Brick is asleep behind me on the chair (thus I am forced to sit on the edge of the seat with my back very very straight -- do not fail to compliment my wonderful posture should you see me!) I get back to my room at last and fire up Parallels and the incomparable Word Perfect. I make a new chapter and type this: Please, this is worse than first draft, OK? When this is done, chances are NONE of these words will remain.

Alexandrine woke up with her face flat on the mattress. Not even a pillow. The room was dark, and beside her the place where Xia's body should have been was still warm. Something was wrong. What exactly that was, she didn't know, but the air felt wrong. The center of her bones jangled with a sense of being off-kilter.
Without moving, she opened her eyes. It turned out she was facing the side of the room with the door, which meant she could make out Xia standing in front of the closed door with his head cocked.

All ready for the kidnapper! I should be so lucky. Instead this stupid little voice says Hey, what if Alexandrine knows all along that she's a witch and she's got some information about how things used to be in the long ago past and is willing to try the old ways with Xia?

Carolyn stares into space while she lets this major temblor of an idea ripple through the book as it exists in her head...

I'm leaving out all kinds of stuff about the story here. Suffice it to say that this would be a total rewrite of just about everything so far. But it would be good I think. It solves some nagging little things that have been bugging me about Alexandrine and her fate yet leaves me with many questions and issues to fill in later. Not impossible. I'm pretty sure I'm going to do it because it makes Alexandrine WAY more interesting...

I know exactly what Jack London meant when he said that you have to go after Inspiration with a club. Whack. Inspiration is a lot of work and sometimes I just want to club it.

And yet, I am glad for the visit.

Labels: inspiration, writing process, Xia

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DeFacto Monday

I know it's Tuesday but it's really Monday in disguise. I had a 4 day weekend that wasn't long enough. I guess they never are. But still. The weekends fly by and the weekdays crawl. Sigh. I mailed off the page proofs for My Wicked Enemy today. I also mailed my taxes to my CPA. That's two big things crossed off the To-Do list. The next one is to finish Xia. Ha. Ha. Ha. I crack myself up. Really. The Fudgester, aka, Speed Brick, aka my dog Fudge is trying to get my attention. So I'm off to cook dinner and throw the stuffed toy for the doggie. Oh, and this morning at the gym (I made it! Yay!!) I was notebooking and not getting anywhere near the issue I wanted to have resolved for tonight... How does Xia get kidnapped without being de-alphabetized? and I was beginning to think I'd have to have some kind of writerly hissy fit with myself. In the last 15 minutes I started discussing that with myself and came up with a couple of ideas. After dinner, we'll see what I write. Something completely different no doubt.

Labels: Mondays, writing, Xia

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Monday, February 18, 2008

Slings and Arrows Plus Bows

My son is doing a history report on Genghis Kahn, and while reading about the great man, he suddenly came to me and said he wanted to make a bow and arrow. OK! So we googled How to Make a Mongolian bow and what do you know? Lots of hits and videos and the like. Unfortunately, a Mongolian bow requires the use fish glue (recipies available!) and yak horn. That last one, as you can imagine, was a show stopper for us. There are no yaks around here. So, he decided an English Long Bow would be an acceptable substitute. The preferred wood for an English Long Bow is yew.

Further research revealed that the Northern Coastal California yew is considered among the best bow-making yew in the world. Another excellent choice is cypress. As it happens, we live in Northern Coastal California. So I gave the Darling Boy a hacksaw and said go cut yourself a six foot branch off the yew tree down by the fence. And if that doesn't work then get a branch off one of the cypress trees by the sheep chute. We live in long bow heaven it seems. Who knew? Off he went with his size 9 1/2 feet and the hacksaw and he came back to the house with the perfect yew branch. One of the websites said to ask the tree's permission first. He says he did, but that it was on vacation at the time. Right now he's out sanding his yew stave.

update: I thought perhaps he'd chosen a limb that was too thick, but I was just looking at it, and now that he's shaved it some, darned if the thing isn't just springy enough to imagine Robin Hood bending it.

I've been through the first round of the page proofs for My Wicked Enemy. Now I'm off to check all the corrections. I'm hoping I'm able to get some time in with Xia.

Labels: My Wicked Enemy, writing, Xia

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Wednesday, February 13, 2008

I feel so bad. . . OK, no I don't.

I saw a headline about Minnesota being the Ice Box of the Nation the other day. Freaking 40 below zero! I thought of Patti O'Shea who lives in Minnesota and I felt bad for her. Then I saw Marjorie M. Liu's pretty picture of ice covered plants and thought, wow. That's some cold. And then there's Kristin Nelson confessing it's colder in NY, where my friend Megan Frampton lives, than it is in Denver (where my non-writing friend Jennifer lives) with all that snow and well. You know what?


This whole week here in No. Cal., has been spectacular weather-wise. Gorgeous, glorious perfect weather. 75. Blue skies, daffodils coming up. No need for a coat when I go outside. Sandals at all times when I'm not at the day job. You go outside and you just think wow. This is just freaking perfect weather. Ah, yes. And then I had to go back inside. That was a bummer. Honest, I felt bad for my cold-weather friends, agents and what have yous. But, gee, not for very long. Sorry. Not that I'm gloating or anything. All right I am. But hey, you guys make me really appreciate the weather here!

So, I finished eliminating the extra character tonight. Next up, kidnapping.

Labels: gloating. weather, Xia

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Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The Carolyn Character Meld is Tricky

I'm still in the middle of pulling an excess character out of the Work in Progress (WIP). I've done three chapters, and had to stop at the last one because it's late and this chapter will be the most work. Some interesting stuff happened and also, quite happily, I've solved the problem of the disappearing hero. Tip: when your hero is unconscious for a chapter and a half, this is bad. Especially when those are the chapters you were thinking would be hot. ::sigh:: A couple of years ago the spectacular Mary Balogh was on a list I was on and she said she'd been told never to have her hero and heroine apart for more than 5 pages. Probably in a longer work you could get away with a few more pages, but not many. I've found I have fewer boring passages when I try to follow that advice. So, 15 pages or so of an unconscious hero is bad. Very bad indeed.

Anyway, today was a boring day except for when I was watching Buffy and doing my character-ectomy some of which I did in the car at lunch time.


My editor emailed me to let me know the page proofs for My Wicked Enemy should be arriving tomorrow. I'm kind of excited to read it. This is Carolyn ignoring the unpleasant fretting in her head, hey it'll only cost me thousands of dollars to re-write the whole book! I have a day off Friday, and Monday is a holiday so, I have a 4 day weekend coming up. Yippee!


Still obsessed with Spike, though.

Labels: Buffy, My Wicked Enemy, Spike, writing, Xia

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Monday, February 11, 2008

Today's Subject: Obsession

Today as I was noodling on about something non-writing related, the writing portion of my head was obsessing about Xia. Major breakthrough involving some forward motion, as in now I have some. It's nice to know where to go from here. Also I'm deleting my first character from the story and folding him into another one. Yay! Bloody carnage, agreed, but this is going to be way better. My stories seem to start out with multiple personalities -- 2 or more characters playing the same role/function. I am ::sigh:: not one of those writers who easily handles a cast of dozens. A dozen makes my head spin. Heck, half a dozen is uncomfortable. So, obsessing was good to me today.

Tonight, The Darling Boy and I watched the last three episodes of Buffy, Season Six. Which brings me to my obsession du jour.



The episode ends with Spike having endured horrific trials in an attempt to return to his original bad and evil vampire self. Make me what I was originally so Buffy gets whats she deserves, he says, all mean and vampire-nasty. Uh-huh. And that's exactly what happens, because, who doesn't deserve a hottie like Spike?

Thank goodness I have it all on DVD, because I don't think I'd make it waiting for TV time to get me to season 7.

Off to remove a character and then have my hero demon-napped. Or is it mage-napped?

Labels: Buffy, Spike, writing, Xia

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Sunday, February 10, 2008

Catching up

Had to do some day job stuff this morning. Yuck. Took longer than it should have due to an issue that was out of my control. But all's well and I'm home now. Xia has been going very slowly lately. I need to make up some words today. But I also have a lot of RITA books to read. Sigh. On the good side, despite the slow going, the ideas have been good. I have 41K words now and things are starting to gel. I'm trying to think of something amusing or interesting to say here, but no go. So! instead of that I'll talk about a growing obsession of mine.

Spike

Oh, my gosh. As perhaps you know, if you read here from time to time, my xmas present to myself was Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD. So, the character Spike is a bad boy vamp who's pretty dang hunky. Plus, there are scenes in which he has very little clothing on and it's quite clear he keeps up a regular workout without overdoing it. And yes, I should be hanging my head in sexist shame for this, but I'm not. It's finally our turn!

Labels: Buffy, Scandal writing, Spike, Xia

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Thursday, February 07, 2008

Spring in Winter!

Today was a gorgeous, spectacular Spring day, right smack in the middle of winter. I was going to work in the car at lunch time but then I decided I'd go for a walk with a buddy from work. Oh, it was beautiful out!

There's a park near where I work that has a smallish forest-y area with several paths and a quite respectable creek. The oak trees are so big you'd need three or more people to get your arms all the way around the trunks. It's a pretty walk and doesn't take any more than 20 minutes or so. The creek was full of rushing water, and we were walking in the huge shady oaks, where, I am quite sure, Robin Hood lurks. And we ran into an older gentleman and his dog Cookie. He walks there just about every day, and after a few times seeing each other we got to be talking, and petting his dog. I suspect he has early stage Parkinson's, and he and his dog are always quite sedate. I started picking up crunchy little sticks for Cookie to chew on when we met. One day we saw her and I called out "It's Cookie!" and she came running down the path to get the stick from me, all happy and goofy the way dogs do sometimes. Who knew she had so much perkiness in her? She's a bit of an elderly dog herself. Now we bring her dog biscuits and she REALLY loves us. So I had a lovely walk on a lovely day and I got to give Cookie some biscuits and scratch her ears and chat a bit. Not too bad for a lunch hour!

Now I'm working on Xia and pushing 40K words and getting a bit nervous about how much I'll need to be ripping out later. I don't have them nailed yet, so there will be massive editing to come I expect. And yet I don't feel too bad about things right now. I imagine that will come. Cue the ominous music: Dun dun DUNNN!

Also, here's a look at the cover for My Wicked Enemy. I need to find a graphics tool for the Mac so I can update my website! They touched up the flames quite a lot since they sent this, and the woman's shirt has been fixed up so the almost-final is even more hot than this. But pretty awesome, huh?



Here's the cover copy:

Carson Philips is a witch on the run. For years the notorious mage Alvaro Magellan has held her as his psychological prisoner. But once Carson gets a glimpse of the true extent of his evil, she flees Magellan's mansion--- stealing a stone talisman of unimaginable power on the way. Her only hope for survival is a demon who ignites a voracious hunger in her she can't deny, a longing she can't resist. . .

Nikodemus is a warlord with a mission. Kill Magellan and his green-eyed witch at any cost. But when he meets the desperate Carson, the pull of her magic takes his breath away. He's not sure he can trust this tantalizing woman--- she is his enemy --- and less sure he can keep his hands off her. But Magellan will stop at nothing to reclaim what belongs to him. Can Nikodemus save Carson before his desire for her destroys them both?

Labels: Book Covers, romance novel covers, Spring day, Xia

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Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Still A bit groggy

My cold is better, but I'm not really feeling all that hot, to be honest. Went back to work today anyway. I have a cool idea for Xia that I'm anxious to get started on, so I'm going to do that. Here's a random garden picture.


These are Paper Whites, but the daffodils are starting to come up. Yippie! I love daffodils. They make me smile.

Labels: flowers, garden, Xia

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Monday, February 04, 2008

Under The Weather

sniff. I don't feel good. I hab a code ib my nobe. I came home from work early and fell asleep. Now I feel groggy and yucky. But so far, I'm not as sick as my son was. I'll sleep in tomorrow and hopefully that will take care of everything.

For once the Darling Boy and I were rooting for the same team in the Superbowl. Yay Giants!! So, yeah. Joe Montana never lost a Superbowl, so I think those comparisons are over for Mr. Brady. As a season ticket holder for the 49ers, I was at Candlestick park for the run up to all but their first Superbowl. Wow, is all I can say. I have never ever seen another QB affect the very air people breathe the way Montana did. He was an amazing QB. And Niner fans love him to the point where if he shows up at a halftime event, people literally cry. Seen it happen, folks. Not that Brady isn't a good QB, obviously he is. But when it came to getting it done, it was Eli Manning yesterday who had the magic. The Giant's defense was awesome.

I didn't get much writing done yesterday. I wasn't feeling so hot, plus I was futzing around, I admit it. Then the Superbowl. But now I'm going to try to get something done now. Hopefully my fuzzy brain will manage not to poop out on me.

Labels: Football, Joe Montana, Xia

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Saturday, February 02, 2008

Saturday Evening Post

Sigh. Went to a meeting for the Evil Day Job this morning. Got home about 1:00pm and then had to go find my sister's extra car keys and take them to her at her job, since she'd locked herself out of her car. Then I came home and fell asleep for a while. I think I'm getting whatever put my son down with a temp of nearly 103. Great. My brother came over and hung out with my son while I logged my writing income and expenses. No fun, but at least that's done. Now I have a raging headache. We'll see about getting any writing done today.

However, I have some cool ideas for Xia.

Labels: Regular life, Xia

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Sunday, January 27, 2008

Sigh

Didn't get much done today. At least not yet. Stuff going on etc that's distracting me a bit. I struggled with Xia today so I decided to start reading from the beginning in order to get a check on where I am with this. Are things hanging together? Are there small tweaks doing big things? Stuff like that. The answer seems to be yes, more or less. So, back to it. Sigh

But Xia ia gratifyingly bad in the opening chapter, and I fixed it starting out more boring than it should have. Hopefully I fixed it enough. I have 15 chapters so far. I hope to exceed 30K today. That would be good.

Labels: editing, plotting or the lack thereof, Xia

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Somedays are not fun