19 posts tagged “life stuff”

The house has fallen through.  This is upsetting on so many different levels, but it also means that I have a LOT less stress and a bit more time to focus on my writing.  There's still fallout to deal with: getting youngest into a better school than her home school, cleaning up the financial mess left behind, recovering or adjusting routines that were disrupted and now either need to get back on track or will need to be readjusted to things like youngest's change in schools, and so on and so forth...oh! And unpacking.  We had started packing and the house has kind of...fallen apart in the craziness, so, yea, will be cleaning up, de-fleaing, and unpacking again.  Not particularly thrilled with how things turned out, but I saw what was coming and got my grieving done before the final ax came down, so I'm angry at what happened (and how), but ready to move forward with what we need to do.

The good news is that I kept up on my Assassin's Choice revisions.  I'm halfway through v6 and should have it finished and ready for beta readers by December.  At least that's my hope.  I've been so focused on A.C. that my other projects have been pretty much set aside for the time being.  I might be able to pick them up with less on my mind and less to do, but I'm not going to worry about it if I don't.  A.C. deserves to be done; I've been working on it for far too long and it's just time to get it off the plate and maybe out the door.

Why would I hang onto it after it's done?  My main concern is the chance of a multi-book contract.  I don't see my Alden books taking 2 years or less from start to finish, and most have indicated that 2 years is generally the time expected between books in a series.  So I need to get the second book to the point that A.C. is at now before I run A.C. itself around.  There may be a day when an Alden book will take 2 years or less, it's just not today. ;)

As for the other novels in process: Blood Charms is ready for me to start the building draft (which is the draft before the rough draft: a lot of information is supposed to go into the building draft, but I'm not sure that's what will happen here), and Phoenix Rising is about ready for the rough.  I've not been working on any shorts, and haven't been submitting much either.  This is one of those things I knew to drop since the house stress was already making me crazy.  Submitting shorts is already a frustrating process, so I really didn't need that on top of the house stuff.  I probably won't get back to submissions until the new year.  The current focus is A.C., Charms, and Phoenix.  Once A.C. is finished, I'll be moving on to book 2 in the trilogy, Quest for Ehlarayn, which is already stripped back and ready for me to get back to work on.

In other news, the husband is in culinary school and very happy.  Unfortunately, he also lost his job, which is actually only bad because of the lack of a paycheck.  The job itself was making him miserable and being run in an unethical manner.  We plan to report and sue, it's just taking us time to get it all figured out...and to find a lawyer.  In the meantime, he's looking for work in the industry.  He's not done a resume snow storm as of yet since midterms are a big concern for him right now, but he's started putting a few out, and the school will be holding a career fair especially for its culinary students next week, I believe.  We're looking forward to it.  In the meantime, we're looking a little on our as well.

So, it's going to take some time to get us back on our feet, especially with the job situation the way it is, but I'm ready to move forward and work on it.  And to get back to a full schedule of writing.

I keep meaning to post here and keep getting distracted by other stuff.  Even writing has fallen by the wayside of late because there's so much going on.

The good news is that A.C. v5 is done!  I'm working on some changes I need to make, which will end up being v6, then it will go out to betas.  The hope is that there won't need to be much done for v7, and I'll be able to start working up a query letter and the scary synopsis.  If nothing else, I can say it's DONE and I actually FINISHED a novel.

Among the things keeping me busy:

»  A freelance editing job.  Took up 6 weeks, and then was aborted.  I discussed the extensive story problems I had with the author, and he chose to put it on the back burner despite the fact that it had been accepted by a small press.  It amazes me that people trust my judgment that much...now why can't I apply it to my own work?  ;)

»  Buying a house.  I can't believe how much WORK it is to buy a house.  I knew it would be initially time consuming because you have to actually go look at houses.  I didn't realize the time sink would continue all the way through until after the move...and we're not there yet.  At this point, we're waiting for a check we need to help pay a few expenses and for a grant program to process our paperwork.  After everything we've done, the hoops we've had to jump, I've told the husband I'm not doing it again unless we can buy outright.  I think we've pretty much decided we're just going to stay put and never move again.  lol

»  Oldest's unemployment, which impacted the household finances in a big way even though she was out of work only for a couple of months.  Of course, the house stuff has also turned the finances upside down, so it's been a bit of a mess.

»  Getting the husband into culinary school.  He starts in October!  We're so excited for him! :)

»  Dragon*Con this past weekend.  I wimped out and only made it through half of Sunday—still have a lot of healing and strength building to do since the surgery.

This is all just the tip of what we've been dealing with.  There's been changes in routines, eating habits, and all kinds of things going on.  Most of it has been good, thank goodness, but there's been a few upsets.

Right now my biggest challenge is finding time to write in a day that's broken up into a dozen little pieces and often has other things going on that takes up what little pieces I have.  Working on it, but it's definitely tough.  About the only thing not suffering right now is Twitter, and that's just because it's so much easier to slap up a brief "here's what's going on" than to write a scene or chapter or blog post.  Things should be less crazy once the house is finalized and we've moved.

Speaking of crazy busy, have another house related call to make and need to take oldest to work then go to the grocery store, so better get going.

But, yay!  A.C. v5 is done!

It's just been crazy of late, a lot of it good crazy, but crazy none the less.  The editing job has become very busy.  We're getting a new manuscript every day, and a lot of them are very good and so go on the to the reader panel (which I'm also supposed to be a part of), plus I've had a novella in edits that was just finalized.  So that's kept me very busy.  With my days so full of the job, it has been hard to find time to work on my own things, especially once the kids get home.  Fortunately, that looks like it might be changing as early as next week.  The tax return this year is really decent (the one advantage to almost no income last year) so I'll be picking up a "work" laptop, work meaning writing and editing.  My desk top will remain my graphics/web work computer, and I'll probably be using it during the day before the kids are home from school, but once I have the laptop, I can extend my day and actually get more work done.  At least that's the hope.

As for what I've managed over the last 3 weeks, chapter 30 is done, world building for Phoenix primarily (though there were some loose ends I finished up for A.C. as well), 2 shorts have been revised and one sent to my crit group while the other has been subbed—in fact a total of 7 stories have been submitted, and I've written 2 articles for the other editors that I lead.  I've also had one weekend down because of problems with my DSL provider and have been fighting some kind of sick since the end of last week.  Chapter 31 has been on my to do list, I just seem to keep having problems getting to it.  Guess I should take care of that, huh?

I'm actually doing pretty good on all my goals for the year so far.  Probably the worst category is finances, but that's to be expected.  The return will help some with that as well, then we have to make the rest work.  I've read 2 books so far this year, one while editing it, the other a published novel; my exercise has taken a different slant, but it is working even though most people wouldn't call it exercise (the fact that I see progress in my strength and stamina tells me it's working whether it's traditional exercise or not); my salt intake is way down, as is my PS2 playing (I've replaced it with reading); I'm averaging 5 days out of the week on feel good things; and I'm only 3k short of where I should be for my word count for the year.  Hopefully I'll start getting ahead once I have the laptop.

So, in general, things are going good so far.  Even with being sick right now, I don't have much to complain about.  This winter has been relatively quiet health wise; the youngest hasn't even been hit once with her usual bouts of bronchitis which she usually gets 2 or 3 times through the winter.  I do hate being sick, but hopefully it will continue to be a mild season for us and this will be the only time I need to complain about it.  I just need to get a move on with A.C.  Phoenix has been doing quite a bit of growing, but I'm finding it to be more my avoidance WIP at the moment, which is not necessarily a good thing, although it does help with that word count goal.

Speaking of which, I just finished doing some work on that tonight, and now I need to move on to A.C.  Just need to push on through....

Or threaten myself with another short story.  *g*

It's been crazy since I last posted here.  Since the 20th of last month I've:

» Checked the edits on 3 novels for Lilley Press
» Checked 4 various versions of the ebooks about to be released
» Gone through 18 slush manuscripts, and read beginning to end at least 6 of them
» wrote up revision notes for yet another novel
» edited a novella (round 1!)
» had 2 doctor appointments, one which was canceled but only after we arrived
» revised a chapter and a half of A.C.
» revised a section of Stolen Priest
» posted 8 crits to my crit group (and am working on at least 2 more today)
» started some world building profiles
» did the Admin stuff for the writers group, including removing inactive members, updating forums, and writing the newsletter
» held an editor meeting for Lilley Press
» hired a new editor
» scored 3 or 4 editor tests (well, 6-8 since it's a 2 part testing process)
» spent an entire day at Carmax trying to get a "new" car (we ultimately prevailed but weren't home until after 11 PM)
» reviewed and made fixes to a website
» spent a day and a half trying to find out if one child will actually get to go to high school
» registered 2 kids for high school
» took the husband to the airport--will be picking him up on Tuesday
» helped find errors in a pdf file when InDesign tried to eat the imported manuscript
» did school related shopping
» celebrated a kid turning 16 with cake and a movie
» had an "I will have to quit if it's not fixed" crises at work--dealt with, I think
» pulled my Metawriting from an ezine after huge editor/author issues--and the edits of the last article took 2 days as well
» revised the 3 handbooks and style sheet for Lilley
» fought and won against one sucky Canon printer
» been to the farmer's market and 2 other grocery stores at least twice each (we know where to shop for what for the best prices)
» helped the husband with his resume
» added an authors page to the Lilley site

All that and some sleep in there, off time because of stormy weather, and family time.

Is it any wonder I haven't been around lately?  I am working on A.C. as best I can during all this.  With the release date coming and more subs coming in, it's been very busy at the job.  I've hired editors to help with that, and may possibly be hiring one more just because I think we'd be REALLY lucky to have her.

Today is sort of a catch all day.  I'm doing crits and updates all over the place.  We'll see if I actually finish any revisions or manage to get back to any of my ignored writing.  It'll be an all nighter, so there's a chance, but I'm also likely to be so tired I won't make any sense.

Both in life and with my writing.  Life right now is a bunch of annoying, but necessary doctor appointments.  Taking care of a recurring female related problem and finally getting back on my heart medication.  Just can't love being winded all the time.  Kids are out of school, though youngest will be going to summer school in June.  Husband is working.  Things aren't better than they were before, but they aren't worse, so this is good.

I'm on ch. 23 of Assassin's Choice and almost 34k in on Phoenix Rising.  Plus I picked up my Novel Plot Building book again and just started chapter 4.  I'm actually sailing through A.C. at the moment.  I'm still behind but managing a chapter a week (both v4 and v5 revisions), sometimes going into a second chapter.  It looks like I'll finish 2 months after my self-imposed deadline, than I'll need to make the v6 revisions I have planned.  Most of those shouldn't be too hard though—the big ones involve some character/race changes, but even they aren't that big.  I expect the book to go out to beta readers by the end of the year.  I'll take a break and early next year start thinking about the query letter, outline, and synopsis.  NOT looking forward to that, actually.  :P

The night owl schedule is definitely a big part of the productivity.  When I do finally get out of bed, I'm usually quite ready to get to work rather than needing time to wake up and figure out my day.  At night, I use my most creative part of my cycle to make progress in my revisions, which seems to be really helpful in keeping me going despite being at the most difficult part of the novel.

I've given up on shorts for the time being, maybe permanently.  Shorts are a hard length for me, the market hunting frustrating and exhausting, and the pay not worth the time put into the process.  Granted, I don't write to make a living...yet, but, at the same time, I'm not writing to put more money into trying to get published than I get out of it.  I have a few credits, some of them in some pretty decent zines.  For now, I'm content on that front and just want to focus on the books, which I'm more comfortable with anyway.  It may be awhile before I get published again, but I'm okay with that.

I've actually had an amazing amount of personal stuff get in the way of my usual activities, some of it health related, some of it family related, and a whole lot of it disruptive.  Things appear to be settling now, for the most part, and I've made a few changes to make my days easier for me.  Not sure they will get me on this blog more than usual, but they are already helping with the writing aspect of things.  Now we just need the weather to be cooperative...which is not likely to happen consistently any time soon.  We need the water, don't get me wrong, so the rain is welcome.  The tornadoes and lightning, however, really aren't as necessary as they seem to think they are.  ;)

Of course, the biggest concern has been my health.  I had to go back on my iron to combat anemia, and finally gave in and went to the doctor when the last 2 weeks proved to be far more difficult than they should have been.  He's put me on medication as a stop gap measure (which is already working) and is having testing done to see what we can do to keep the issue under control in the future.  A lot of this has to do with my weight, and a lot of it has to do with my age.  I was taking tiny steps towards a healthier me when the newest wrinkle showed up.  With the temporary measures already having a dramatic affect for the better, I'm already trying to get back into some of the habits that were helping me before.  I may hold off on exercise for a bit, though, just to allow things to stabilize before I go adding something back into the mix.

One of the biggest changes I've made is to my schedule.  I'm not sure why, but months after leaving my substitute teaching job, I was still on the working girl schedule: up early, awake all day, to bed around midnight.  For most people, this works...except maybe the midnight thing.  For ME, this is a nightmare.  I hate mornings (I like to say I'm allergic to them) and have always done better with a night time schedule--meaning to bed at 3 AM (or later) and up at 10 or 11 AM.  I don't even start to feel creative energy until 1 AM or later, so being in bed at midnight robs me of my most creative time.  After talking with the husband about this, it was agreed that I should try to go back to my own schedule, with a small change: I still have to get up to get the kids off to school.  I just go back to bed once they are on their buses and sleep until 11 or noon.  The old work schedule rears its ugly head still, so the shift over is proving a bit more difficult than I thought it would be, but, as I said earlier, the positive results are already being seen.  I've been working A LOT faster on A.C. than I was before starting to switch over.  Nothing beats working within your own creative cycle.

The editing job has also gone through some changes.  Our acquisitions editor resigned for personal reasons that had nothing to do with her love for us.  She just didn't feel it was the right fit for her.  As a result, my position as senior editor is now merged with acquisitions, and I've had to do some shuffling around with my responsibilities to get everything to fit.  Fortunately, it's still quiet for us.  It may not stay that way once we have our August launch and release.  I'm looking forward to it, but we also still have a lot to do to get 3 of our 4 books ready on time (the 4th may or may not be ready, and we're okay with that).

In other news, my essay "When Tears Fall" has been reprinted in Voices of Autism, an autism anthology.  I am VERY excited about this antho.  It's already received at least one wonderful review:

The fifth entry in the Voices anthology project from the Healing Project, this work includes over 40 different stories and vignettes written by parents, teachers, and people with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) that showcase how families and caregivers measure perseverance, understanding, and success. Many of the selections stand out, including an author’s account of her autistic son, a seventh grader’s perspective on her two siblings with autism, a memoir by an adult with autism who relied on a tire advertisement to get through tough times, and an account of the challenges of dating an adult with Asperger’s. The book’s real strengths are the adult-penned passages, which will give readers a better sense of what autism truly is. Taken individually, the stories show glimpses of the impact that autism has on individuals and those they love. Taken collectively, they paint a rich landscape that many will find familiar. Highly recommended for public libraries and academic libraries with disability collections.

-- ­Corey Seeman, Kresge Business Administration Library, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor

I hope you will consider picking up a copy.  Autism is probably one of the least understood but most prevalent disabilities in the world today.  1 out of 166 people are diagnosed with autism, and it affects everyone in the autistic's life.  Probably the most frightening part of the disability is that those who have it look normal.  It's not like so many disabilities where you can tell there's something different just by the person's appearance.  When you combine this with the lack of knowledge about it, the result can be devastating for the family.  I've been a target of the blame game, of being told I should get another opinion because it's probably not autism, of having to fight for everything that my son is supposed to get by law.  The only thing that will help is education.  The essays and stories in this book come from our personal experiences as family members of autistics and from those with autism.  Nothing could inform better.

Between personal stress at home, work, weather, and a few other things, not much work has been done on my own writing recently (note previous entry).  However, I have finally reached the current halfway mark in Assassin's Choice in terms of chapter numbers.  I may be past that in actual word count because there's a huge chunk towards the end of the book that may get cut.  Phoenix Rising also got a nice, healthy word count addition this week--I now have a Friday buddy that I meet with to work on "alternate" projects.  Hopefully meeting with her every week will help keep me on track with it.

In publication news, two of my short stories are now available on AnthologyBuilder.com: "In the Blood" and "Intended".  One of them even received positive comments from the site editor.  I need to update the site to reflect that, I suppose.  ;)

There's little else to post about really.  I'm ruminating a new Meta and considering writing a new article on critiquing (yea, like we all ne4ed another one--but this one comes from something I realized about the crits I receive and how I react to them).  I'm still working on a short, and, yes, it's very odd for me to plod my way through a first draft of a short like this.  I just finished a S. L. Veihl book and have one other novel and an omnibus lined up for me to read.  For work, one manuscript has been returned to the author for round 2 edits, and the second manuscript is about done with round 1.

I did start trying out a new hard copy method for tracking my submissions.  It's going to take a bit to get all the old stuff in the columnar book...and I may end up having to do it all over again because I'm not so sure I like it.  I like the idea of a book and the information I'm trying to keep (in general), but the book is a bit...big.  I'm thinking of making my own template then having it copied and bound at Staples.  We'll see.

And...that's about it.  Told you it's been quiet.

I've just been sick.  Really, REALLY sick.  It's definitely been a week to forget--everyone in the house caught it, including the husband who kept trying to act like he had nothing.  It kicked his butt too.  As for me, I slept.  A LOT.  A good 3 days of sleep.  And didn't eat much.  And didn't write at all.  Or work, for that matter.

I'm pretty much behind on everything at the moment.  I'm even 30k behind in my word count goal for the year.  All I can do now is hope the rest of the year gets better from here, really.  Most of this week will focus on catching up with work and taking care of things on that end.  I'm still getting pretty tired after being up for a few hours, though, so catching up may not be the operative word yet.  I don't want to push myself too hard and end up relapsing with this stuff--it was bad enough the first time around.  I have goals for the week, it's just slow and steady is going to be the mantra.  If I don't make the goals, so be it.

I spent most of last week fighting sinus crud and generally being sick.  By Wednesday, I gave up, crawled in bed, and pretty much stayed there.  By Friday, I was feeling better, but I decided to keep taking it easy--I've been fighting a lot of ickiness since I stopped subbing.  My kids haven't been sick, so I'm not sure where it's coming from.  Rather than rush back to work and risk another relapse, I just stayed in bed.

I did manage to get alden.nu back online and in working order, though.  That took all of the weekend, but its done.

Now my plan is to focus on getting A.C. back on track.  Have other stuff in the works as well, but A.C. is the priority.

We had a wonderful holiday, but I'm glad it's over.  My oldest daughter and her family came down on Christmas Eve and spent a few days with is, middle daughter was over for the day with her boyfriend (who left right after we ate), and the kids father was out for about a week or so.  The gift pile was just scary, even taking into account there were a lot of people doing the giving and a couple of extra people receiving.  Not much writing done in December at all--just too busy.  The kids went back to school on January 3, and I've spent most of this last week trying to catch up on a few things.  But now it's time to get back into the groove...or to find a groove to get back into.  ;)

My first priority is A.C., which I want done and out to beta readers by November.  It's a late date, but I have the current v4/v5 combined revision I'm doing to finish, then some major changes for one of the characters to make in a v6 revision.  I'm keeping a to do list for v6 as I work through v4/v5.  Most of it is nit picky things, but I'm changing the race of a character (dropping the previous race completely out of the Alden world) and that will require some larger changes.  I suspect beta readers will find places where I missed things.  ;)

I'm also working on Phoenix Rising.  The notes draft is going pretty well, but is minus notes and I suspect has some redundancy.  I'll finish it, print it, make notations of what needs to be fixed, and revise the notes draft before moving on to the building draft.  I need to work on world building for it (and A.C. as well).  I've also got Stolen Priest out for me to look at, but it's a pretty low priority for me right now.

Nine shorts are in various stages of being worked on: "A Single Parent In A Married Relationship" (essay), "Blood Whispers" (Vampire), "The Reckoning" (SF), "Gift of Writing" (Supernatural), "Magda" (??), "Iris" (SF), "Rebuilding After Rejection" (Article; being updated), "Promises" (Vampire), and "Fairy Dragon" (brand new Fantasy).  Most of these are in various stages of being revised, although "Fairy Dragon" is so new the rough isn't finished.  Several are a couple of years old, which is my problem with shorts--they aren't a priority for me.  They'll eventually get done; I'm just not one to impose deadlines on them since they tend to get pushed aside more frequently for other things.

The only other project to worry about is fixing Alden.nu.  I tried to give it a start this morning, but there's a problem with the MT install, so I have to wait until the fella who handles the server gets back online to fix it for me.  Alden.nu will take awhile to get back together anyway--most of the areas that have problems have to be restored page by page.  That's a lot of pages to have to get back online.

Goals for 2008:
» 450,000 words
» Finish A.C. and get it out to whole book readers
» Finish Phoenix rough draft and revisions to v3
» at least 1 professional publication (no, I never learn)
» finish "Letters", "Single Parent", and "Blood Whispers"
» write 6 new shorts
» read 1 book a month

The only thing I'm worried about on that list is the 6 new shorts, but the rest should be quite manageable. :)