The Prodigal Returns

No, I haven’t actually dropped off the face of the planet. Not that there’s been much evidence to the contrary around here…I’ve been busy. Yeah. That’s it. Busy. Sort of. Or lazy, whichever word you prefer (although the second is probably much nearer the actual truth). Work’s been pretty busy lately, and I’ve been out of town, too, so that’s two excuses I’m using.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of editing on Witches. I’m a little past the halfway point in this pass, and of course, editing eats my brain, so it’s a slow go most of the time. At this point, I’m looking forward to finishing this pass and putting it away for a while.

My crit group has two new members, and is a lot more active lately, so that’s been taking more of my time than it has in roughly a year. It’s all good, though. We needed the new blood, and they seem to be a good fit. They’ve both done really useful crits on my latest chapter, and I’m looking forward to getting into both of their stories.

I haven’t done any writing this month. At all. Might possibly explain my less-than-sunny attitude of late. (Actually, it probably does. I’m always much happier when I’m writing something. Guess that’s a sure sign I was meant to be a writer, huh? Maybe not a good one, but a writer nevertheless.) I’m hoping to get at least a few thousand words in this week so the month won’t be a total bust on the writing front. I think I needed the break from my over-achieving madness, but I can feel the stories starting to nibble at the edge of my brain again. Not to mention that I’m playing catch-up on the HTTS lessons, and that story is starting to take shape as well. Like I need another story in the queue for this year.

Actually, the main reason I haven’t been around lately is that I got sucked into Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander books. Completely consumed. To the point that I find myself talking with a Scottish accent (But only in my head. So far, I’ve managed to keep it from being out loud. The talking-to-myself-in-my-head thing is totally normal for me. I swear.) I absolutely love these books. The world is so realistic I feel like I’m there. I love Jaime and Claire. I think they’re great characters, and so lifelike I feel like I know them. (And, incidentally, could I get a Jaime for myself, please?) I love big books that let me sink into them, and I’ve been totally immersed for the last several weeks, to the point of staying up ’til 3 a.m. on a day I have to work because I had to find out what happens! I just wish I’d read the books before Conestoga last July, when Diana Gabaldon was the Guest of Honor. I did go to several panels she was on, and was very intrigued by her, but I probably would have gotten a lot more out of it if I’d read the series first. Love them. Can’t wait ’til September when the next one comes out. And, strangely enough, I’ve seen three people in the last couple of weeks who have been reading one of the books. Go figure. I’m surrounded.

So, that’s the reason I haven’t been around. I’ve been in Scotland (I wish), and in the 1700s. Good reason, no? But I finished A Breath of Snow and Ashes today (at about 2 a.m.), so I have absolutely no excuses for slacking off. (Like I need an excuse.)

Why, No, I Don’t Have A Life Outside Of Writing (Why Do You Ask)?

And the results for the first week of June are….Success! Well, partial success, anyway. I hit all my word count goals for the week, in all four stories. The zombie story is going, and that’s about all I can say about that. The sequel to Witches is coming along quite well, and staying mostly true to the outline. The werewolf story is flowing very well, and I have the next two or three scenes outlined (and by “outlined”, I mean I have one sentence for each scene). I started writing the sequel to the 2YN story this weekend. It’s flying along surprisingly well, especially considering I outlined the first two chapters only, and hey, finished those this weekend. Looks like there’s some more outlining in my near future…

The editing? Didn’t go so well. I did get about five chapters edited in Witches. Sigh. It needs a lot of editing. Right now, I’m going through back crits from SG, and seeing what I agree with. Most of the crits are spot-on, and the changes make the story much stronger. So, now all I have to do is follow up with those changes through the rest of the story. Didn’t even get started editing Tempest, but I’ll catch up on that. I’m going to try to re-do the outline for that story before I edit, to help keep me in line. Here are my approximate word counts for the week:

Zombie story: 1,500
Werewolf story: 5,500
Witches sequel: 4,000
2YN sequel: 5,500
Editing: 10,000

May Madness

I knew at the beginning of the year when I set my personal goals that I was being overly ambitions. But it seemed doable. It still seems doable, although my brain does not seem to share my belief. For the last two weeks, I’ve written nothing. Nada. Zilch. On the upside, I did get the 2YN story edited. Again. And I’m happier with this draft. Hoping to start sending it out soon. It’s now tentatively titled Charming Dragons. I wrote about 37,000 words in the first two weeks of the month, so May wasn’t a total bust, but I’d hoped to finish the draft of the Witches sequel this month, and that didn’t happen. It didn’t even come close to happening.

However, I do have a spiffy new plan to finish writing the three stories I’m currently working on (zombie story, Witches sequel, werewolf story), by the end of August, along with the sequel to Charming Dragons. And edit Witches AND Tempest of Angels. So, clearly I haven’t passed the overly-ambitious part of the year yet. 🙂 I do have set word count goals every day, and certain days to work on certain stories. I’m hoping the juggling act will keep me from burning out on any one story. At least, that’s the plan.

Now I’m off to brainstorm the new story. Wish me luck!

Newest Reading Discoveries

Yes, this will be the post about books I’ve read lately. Except I’m not going to list all the books I’ve read since I last talked about it. There are far too many, and not because I’ve read a lot this year. (I haven’t. I’ve only read 43. I’m woefully behind on my goal of 165.) It only means I’ve been horrible about posting here. But I’m trying to remedy that, I swear.

I mentioned three of the books I’ve read lately (Outlander; Need; Tattoo) in my post about Conestoga, so I won’t mention them again here. (Except to say you should really go buy them. Right now.) So, skipping those, and touching on a few of the books I really, really enjoyed over the past couple of months.

First up are a pair of books by Maria V. Snyder: Magic Study and Fire Study. These two are the last books in the trilogy that started off with Poison Study, which I read last year. I don’t know how I managed to forget that there were more books in this series, but when I saw them on the shelf, I immediately bought both of them. How to explain just how sucked into these books I became? I can’t. The first one, Poison Study, intrigued me from the very first page, when Yelena is taken from the dungeon, where she’s about to be put to death, and offered a position as the General’s poison taster. Freedom or death? Hmm. Not a tough choice. The catch is, she’s given a poison, Butterfly’s Dust (I think that was the name of it), for which she has to come to Valek, the General’s chief of security and über-spy, every day for an antidote. Of course, much chaos and intrigue ensue, at the end of which, she’s revealed as having magic, and therefore is banished…back to the homeland from which she was kidnapped as a child.

In Magic Study, she is reunited with her family, and then taken to the Citadel to learn how to use her magic. Except that there’s a crazy-mad magic-wielder out there who is kidnapping girls and torturing them in a bizarre ritual to gain unlimited power (aren’t they all after unlimited power?), and she ends up as his final victim. This story carries over somewhat into Fire Study. Ms. Snyder’s writing and storytelling kept me absolutely riveted, and I found myself staying up far too late on several nights, desperate to find out what happened. Her newest book, Storm Glass, which is set in the same world, came out last week, and I’m eagerly anticipating its arrival in my mailbox.

I’m a huge fan of Rachel Caine, especially the Morganville Vampires series (new book out in approximately one month), but I enjoy the Weather Warden series as well. She has a new series out, the Outcast Season, the first book of which is Undone. This one is set in the same world as the Weather Warden books, and it’s about Cassiel, a Djinn who refuses to do as she’s ordered, and gets cast out and into a human body. Needless to say, this does not make her very happy. Or well-adjusted. But she ends up working for the Wardens with a human partner, and discovers that something evil is after her new friends.

And I just finished reading Nobody’s Princess, by Esther Friesner. The cover caught my attention first, so I picked up the book and read the back cover copy. Helen of Troy as a young girl who can’t figure out why everyone thinks she’s so pretty, nor does she understand why it even matters? I immediately fell in love with the idea. She doesn’t care about being pretty, she just wants to be a warrior, like her brothers. For a Spartan, you wouldn’t think that was such a big deal, but she is a princess, so apparently that’s a no-no. But she manages, and when her sister is sent off to the neighboring kingdom to be married, she goes along to comfort her, then ends up on several grand adventures of her own. Adventures that would make even her Spartan-king father have a heart attack. This one is firmly YA, and I really liked it. There’s a second book of Helen’s adventures, too, called Nobody’s Prize. I assure you, it will be making an appearance on my bookshelf in the near future as well.

Near Disaster

This was supposed to be a post about what I’ve been reading lately, but I think that will have to wait while I ramble on about something else: Yesterday, as I was working on the Witches sequel, my computer apparently took a dislike to the work and ate it. All 75,000 words of it. Gone. Not only did the computer close my Word program, it erased the entire document off of my thumb drive. It did do an AutoRecovery save at the last second, because I saw it before it vanished into the ether. So I didn’t panic. Then.

I opened up Word again. No message saying Word had saved the file I was working on and would I like to open it again? (Yes, please, I would have loved that. But no.) And that’s when I realized the draft was gone off my thumb drive as well. This is the point where I started to panic. I mean, I’ve been working on this story for two months, and this draft is scheduled to be finished this month, so that was a lot of work. I resisted the impulse to bang my head against the desk.

I checked the on-line help site, and came up with a whole list of things to try, including re-setting Word functions to recover a damaged file. No go. After two hours of this, I developed a headache (No, not from banging my head against the desk.), turned off the computer (a.k.a. “you piece of crap, give me back my story!) and retreated to regroup and take a nap. Which wasn’t very restful, let me tell you, since visions of re-writing all 300 pages kept flashing through my mind, along with a plan to get myself caught up on this by the end of the year while still accomplishing my other goals.

When I woke up, I took a deep breath, turned on the computer, and tried again. Three hours and countless document searches later, I finally found it. Well, most of it. I lost about 500 words, but really, in the scheme of things, what’s 500 words? It was stored in some temporary file somewhere, and I was so happy to see it that I could have kissed the screen.

Now, after my best friend had her hard drive crash a couple of months ago and lost everything, I made sure to save copies of all my drafts to my two e-mail storage accounts. Did I have a copy of the Witches II draft there? No. Of course not. Do I now? Definitely. So, the morale of this story is: 1) Always, always, always back up your work, and 2) Prayers to the computer gods sometimes get results.

In a slightly different writing-related-crash, Holly Lisle has a new website where she does Writing Crash Tests. You should check it out, and see what happens with the Case of the Exploding Cat.

Conestoga 2009

I’ve been to this con three times now. Does that qualify me as a regular? Possibly. I have to say, this year seemed a lot… tamer than previous years have. Not nearly so many people in costumes this time around, which was something of a disappointment. I always enjoy checking out the costumes.

We did sit in on some interesting panels. And, of course, discovered some great new (to me) writers. One of them was Carrie Jones. I went out and bought her newest book, Need, which came out in December and is on it’s 7th print run. 7th! Isn’t that awesome? And the book was great. I think I read it in under 3 hours. Actually, I owe Carrie a great big thank you. Her YA tale of pixies running amok kept me entertained in the airport AND distracted during my flight. And I’m terrified of flying, so that should tell you what a great book it is.

I also-finally-read books by two authors I “discovered” at Conestoga last year. The first one was Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander. Yes, I know that book has been out a little while, and many people have told me to read it, I just…didn’t have time, okay? But I couldn’t put it down. LOVED it. I love me some Scotsmen in kilts. And how many hot red-headed protagonists do you really see these days? Not enough of them, if you ask me. I already bought the next two books in the series (and would have bought more, if the bookstore had had the third one in stock just then).

I bought Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ Tattoo. I’ve been on a bit of a YA kick lately. It seems my own writing is running to YA, and I’ve always loved reading it, it just seems to be dominating in my reading pile the last few months. Although, glancing at said TBR pile, I seem to have run out of YA. Hmm. Well, Rachel Caine’s new Morganville Vampires book will be out in June. Guess I can wait ’til then. I think. Anyway, enough blathering. Tattoo was an excellent, engaging read. I liked the premise, loved the characters. I’m a sucker for a four-friends book anyway, but the girls in this one were so different and yet so compatible, I really enjoyed it. The idea of temporary tattoos that give you cool Sidhe powers and only having three days to save the world from an evil fairy, all while getting ready for the biggest dance of the school year, is awesome, too. I definitely recommend this.

The Werewolves are Winning

I’ve been really bad about keeping this blog updated lately. Sorry. On the up side, I have been getting a lot of writing done. A lot. I’m a little over 50k into the sequel to Witches. That’s flowing along pretty well, and the action is heating up. I’m being mean to Bali at the moment, but hey, somebody’s gotta do it, right? She’ll thank me later, when everything blows over. (Probably.)

I’ve been busy killing zombies, too. Being as gross as possible is pretty cool. And I’ve actually really enjoyed writing two military men characters. Most of my characters are normally fairly clean-mouthed. But not Sammy and Luke. Not in this chapter, anyway. But what can you expect when you’re under attack by hordes of flesh-craving zombies? They’re very persistent, I’ll give them that. Sammy, as usual, provides a shot of humor to even the direst situation. I’ll be sorry to finish writing him…

Not to mention getting to know Chance’s new high school in the Werewolf story. Can I just say that she has a really crappy first day at her new school? It’s great, really. For me. Not for her. (She’d probably hate me, and rightly so.) She is so much fun to write. Clearly, I haven’t progressed much (mentally) past my high school days. Or so it seems when I sit down to write her. She practically jumps through the keyboard and onto the page, full of snarky comments and attitude (not to mention her to-die-for wardrobe). Her new friend Benjy has really surprised me, too. I had no idea he was going to turn out quite like he has. Actually, even though the sequel to Witches is coming along so well, and I’m enjoying the zombie story, too, my Muse is itching to play in Chance’s world almost exclusively. I know discipline is good for a writer, but it seems like I get my pages done for Chance in a split second, and sometimes, it’s a whole lot harder to hit my goals on the other stories. I think I’m going to have to devote one day a week completely to Chance’s story. That should satisfy my Muse, and give her incentive to hit my goals on anything else I’m working on. Sounds like a plan.

I probably won’t post here again until sometime late next week. I’ll be flying to Dallas this Thursday, and then my best friend and I are driving to Tulsa for Conestoga. This year should be interesting. It’s in April instead of July this year, so most of the “regular” writers won’t be there. I’m a little disappointed, but I’m looking at it as an opportunity to find new favorites. After all, I didn’t know most of the regulars when I first went to Conestoga in 2007.

No, I Haven’t Fallen Off The Face Of The Earth…

…Why do you ask? I did go on a trip home to Texas at the end of March for a week, so that kind of knocked me out of my routine. But now I’m getting back into the swing of things, and making significant progress.

I’ve finished up this round of edits for the Atlantis story, now tentatively titled Heart of the Sea. I’ll be looking for beta readers for it soon, but I think this draft is stronger than the last one. I’m a little too close to it at this point to be sure, so only time will tell.

The zombie story is actually coming along quite well. The rest of it is completely figured out and outlined. Yay! I think that’s one thing that sort of held me back when I worked on my chapters: not knowing quite how everything would work out. Roughly twelve chapters left, so maybe three months or so until the first draft is finished. The chapter I’m working on now should be fun, lots of zombie blood and guts!

The werewolf story is actually smoothing out now. I went back and wrote a couple of chapters over the main turning point in Chance’s life. I wanted to get the details of what had happened worked out in my mind, and I wanted to see if my first instinct to start in the other spot was correct. It was, but writing those chapters gave me a much better feel for the story itself and what’s going on. Surprisingly, it’s going well, considering I’m working outline-free.

The sequel to Witches is going very well right now. I’m about 30k in, and the characters, my old friends, are still very much alive and breathing for me. I know where this one is going, and I’m having a lot of fun. It’s good to get back to my oldest set of characters. I’m hoping everything keeps coming together like it has been.

Milestone

Today I started writing the sequel to Witches. I was terrified to touch the keyboard. Terrified. I spent roughly 7 1/2 years working on Witches (Not that it’s done yet. Oh, no. Not by any means.), and it’s my baby. So I’m terribly afraid to mess up its little sister. Even though this story is completely outlined already, and ready to go. I was still scared to start writing.

But when I made myself start, it flowed surprisingly easy. The characters were just there, in my head, right where I left off. Like it hadn’t been two years since I did anything but editing on the story. It was great, really. And unlike last time, I already know all the horrible things I’m going to do to my characters…

Randomness

For the past two weeks, I’ve felt like I have absolutely no spare time at all in my life. There is so much that I want to get done, and there really aren’t anywhere near enough hours in the day to get it all done. And I’m not just talking about writing-related things, either.

I’ve tried to really make working out a priority in my life right now. Getting up early and going before work, going on my days off. It’s hard, and I’d much rather be doing other things, but I know it’s worth it. It just seems like it sucks up so much of my time! I’ve barely had any time to read for the past couple of weeks, which is beyond unusual for me. Normally, I read something every day, even if it’s only a couple of pages. Lately, there have been days where I haven’t read anything at all (or at least nothing strictly for enjoyment).

I’ve been reading the story I’m critting in a novel swap, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I actually got pretty sucked into it last night and read about thirty pages or so. Now I’m twenty pages from the end, and looking forward to the rest of it.

Other than that, I haven’t been getting much accomplished. I’m re-reading Tempest of Angels right now, trying to figure out how to make it stronger. Haven’t had any revelations in that department yet, but I’m hoping.

The HTTS lesson did not go terribly well. I gave my Muse what I wanted, and a deadline, and my Muse proceeded to pretty much ignore me. Until the deadline passed. Then I got one idea with a bit of detail, and today, two more ideas with little-to-no detail. Sigh. Please, Muse, can you help me out here?