#SipSwap WIN!

I got my Sip Swap mug in the mail today. Well, technically today is Sunday, so I probably got it yesterday, but the mail was late, so I didn't get it until this morning. It spent a chilly night in the mailbox.*

*My neighborhood is strange. There's one little clump of mailboxes for the entire neighborhood. We have single lane roads that were only paved about two years ago. It was originally planned as a vacation destination, rather than a residential community. It makes life here quite nice, but accessibility wasn't a priority during the original street layout forty years ago. Thus, it's a quarter-mile hike up a rather steep hill to the mailbox. If the mail's late, it's often the next day before I try again.

So anyway, I found this today:

DAMN STRAIGHT: PRIORITY MAIL!

Inside this magical parcel, this awaited me:

 Yes, it's a rather plain looking mug. My coffee (in the pink mug in the background) was feeling kinda smug and confident. BUT THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED.

AAARGH!!! My coffee is screaming in terror! Or possibly squeeing with glee.

THERE'S AN OCTOPUS IN MY COFFEE! How awesome is that?!

**DISCLAIMER: I love octopodes. In fact, one of the favorite characters I ever invented while writing is a kraken. He was supposed to be an incidental character in one manuscript, and he rapidly became a character I wanted to know better. He will be central to the next story I write, because I can't just let him go. :D So I hereby name the little octopus in this mug Stewie. He'll be my little tentacled buddy while I write that manuscript.

***SECOND DISCLAIMER: Morgan approves of the wrapping job:

Seriously, he spent like five minutes ensuring the paper was not explosive, nor filled with cat treats, nor live rodents. He pronounced it safe after a thorough inspection.

Thank you so much to @araenvo (also known as Simon P. Clark). Go compliment him on his fine sense of style.

So, who else got their #SipSwap mug? I can't wait to see all the posts! :D

This is the New Normal

Life returns to "normal." Every time there's a major disruption to my regularly scheduled programming, I flail for a few days, rush to catch up, and then settle back down again. I'm sure it's the same for most everyone, though.

I am actually making progress in my editing again. Other than yesterday's headache detour, things are getting back on track. It makes me feel like I'm moving forward again, instead of stuck in the strange loop of trying to catch up every day.

I realize I haven't posted the Progress-O-Meter in a while. I think I'll save it for when I start working on the WIP again. I probably shouldn't call it the Work In Progress until I start back on it, though. How about the Work On Hold? WOH?

I've been biting my tongue about a promotion I plan to have. I decided to hint and wink about it, so here goes:

I found a company in my area that makes the most awesome things that I'm going to order as a tie-in to Running Down the Dragon. I'm waiting to hear back from them and set up a meeting with their artist to design the...promotional item thingies. I can't really say any more until after our meeting, but I promise to post all the awesomeness as soon as I have artwork. I will say I am incredibly thrilled about it, to the point I'm bouncing a little writing about it even in this vague, unhelpful way. :)

Yoga Cat

On that note, here's some art to tide you over. A deer walked through my yard yesterday, but she was gone by the time I thought to take a picture. Instead of the lovely wildlife shot I wanted to post, here's a gratuitously silly picture of my cat doing yoga. I call it the Upward Facing Cat pose.

I'm going off the grid. I hope I come back...

For the next six days, I'll be somewhere in the wilderness. Camp. It's always fun, but if nothing's changed since last year, that also means I'll be COMPLETELY DISCONNECTED FROM THE INTERNET! *feel free to panic on my behalf*

There's one spot at the camp, out back between the kitchen and the dumpster, where I can get phone messages if I stand on one leg, point my left hand due North-Northwest, and recite the alphabet backward in a Cookie Monster voice. Unless the Cellular Deities have bestowed new towers in the wilderness of the Catoctins, I'm afraid this will be the extent of my connectivity. One night we're planning to take the girls into Civilization to see a movie, so I might have a technology reprieve midweek. We'll have to wait and see.

In the mean time, I hope y'all enjoy the Internets without me. I'm going to have to figure out this newfangled thing called a "book." It's made of paper, but it's full of words! Just like the Internets! Unfortunately, I think I got a defective book, because there's no photos of cats doing funny things, or GIF's of Doctor Who, and no clicky-links! Gah!

Morgan: Defender of the Camp Shirts

Lulu is a counselor this year at camp. Her camp name is Bumblebee. There will be a hundred girls who won't ever think of her as Lulu, but for the rest of their lives will call her Bumblebee. She is okay with this. The camp already had a Darth Vader and a Voldemort, so Bumblebee was about the best name she could get. I leave you with The Bemittened One keeping her new t-shirts warm.

This Week versus Last Week

Last week was a real doozy.  The only day in my schedule book that wasn't blackened with "to do" items was Monday. And Monday was just Monday, so it was bad enough on its own without getting bogged down with anything else. Needless to say, my writing suffered last week.

Every time I sat down to write, I had to go back and try to remember what the hell I was writing about. Scatterbrained. Addlepated. I ended up wasting a lot of time going over the disjointed few pages I managed to hack out in a futile attempt to make them work. By the time I caught up and felt ready to dive in again, it was time to rush off somewhere else. I nearly cried several times. I did engage in a little primal scream therapy, with mixed results. It frightened the cat, which was good for a laugh, at least.

I also had the stupid idea, in the midst of the cuckoo schedule, to cut back on the amount of soda I was consuming. I was feeling mighty unhealthy about my diet, since I had several meals at the ball park (one of which consisted entirely of hot dog products), and I was coming to rely too heavily on my souvenir-sized drink servings. That, and I couldn't button the black shorts I wear to work at the games.

At first, I tried to go cold turkey from the caffeine. The first day, I couldn't remember why I had a headache, why I felt so damned tired, and why I was so fuzzy and unable to concentrate. After a few cups of coffee, when I started feeling better, I attributed my precipitous drop in IQ to caffeine withdrawal. It got easier to cut out the sodas if I dramatically increased my coffee and tea consumption. Problem solved. Though I'm not sure it's really any healthier to suck down coffee like it's going out of style, at least it's not full of sugar and calories like the Cokes and Dr. Pepper I was formerly addicted to.

So that was last week. This week, there are only two things in my schedule book so far. Thursday, we're going out to dinner, since my birthday is Friday. Going out to dinner on Mother's Day weekend is against the rules around here. At least my birthday doesn't fall on Mother's Day itself this year. That really sucks. So we're trying to find an Indian or Thai restaurant somewhere within twenty miles of our house that's worthy of Birthday Dinner status. Friday, my actual birthday, we have our final Girl Scout meeting of the year, and it's actually going to be a ton of fun. It's more of a party/fun time for the girls, at a local warehouse that's filled with moon bounce contraptions. And yes, the adults get to bounce, too. So I'm making the Helper Monkey come with us. Birthday privilege.

And I forgot to mention today's events (but since I have a Moleskine planner, which counts Monday as the first day of the week, today is still technically "last week." Now I've hurt my brain thinking about that.) I have to buy groceries, since we've eaten nearly every edible item in the house while I ran around last week. Lets put it this way: I had Cheerios for dinner THREE TIMES last week. Before we hit the grocery store, we're going to a scavenger hunt competition at a local mall. It should be fun. I'll probably get suckered into buying ice cream or a pretzel, but I won't complain.

The rest of the week will be devoted to a research project, and writing. Finally, blissfully writing.

On the up side, Lulu had her chorus concert last night. The thing ran more than THREE HOURS!!! It was a little excessive, if you ask me, but luckily they saved the most interesting, audience pleasing songs for the end. Choral music, in my mind, was not designed for interminable concerts. I'd rather have watched three Broadway shows back to back, but I had to be there. Not only was my kid singing (and she did a brilliant job, by the way), but I was on the Puke Crew. It sounds more disgusting than it was. If they had a medical emergency, I had to be ready to assist the sick child. I crossed my fingers that no one actually got sick, and apparently that worked. I got a front-row seat out of the deal, and had a primo viewing spot for the show.

Glad I snapped a picture of the ticket, because they confiscated them at the door! Yay, Electronic Scrapbook!

On the even upper side, Lulu has decided that next year she wants to take a musical theater class, instead of just a singing class. This bodes well for next year's end-of-year concert show, at least.

All this being said, what have I done with my free morning thus far? Ha! I slept until 9:30, had M&M's and coffee for breakfast, and caught up on bloggy things. Perfect Sunday morning (other than the fact I haven't even glanced at the WIP yet). Now I'm grabbing my pickaxe, and heading out to the word mines.

The potentially endless loop of editing and revisions.

I've discovered a strange anomaly in the writing process: It's possible to spend the rest of my life revising and editing a single novel.

I already went about twelve rounds with Dragon Hunter, and I thought it was done. Since then, I wrote the sequel, Devil May Care, and went a dozen rounds with it, as well. I even started on the third novel in the series, and have about 60 pages done on that. And then my submissions for Dragon Hunter started coming back. I've had three agents read the manuscript so far, and I finally had one who rejected it with something more than "This isn't for me," or "I like it, but I just don't love it."

Let me tell you, it's great to get some actual feedback I can work with. I went through the five stages of grief over the fact that my story wasn't perfect the way it was, and then I sat down and actually read it again. Yikes!

Either I've really grown as a writer in the last few months since I started querying it, or I went through a period of serious self-delusion when I started sending it out. The agent's comments were spot on. There were a few whackadoodle plot missteps, a serious lack of explanations for some of the things that I thought were obvious (since I made up the world, and can see everything in my head, and know all the characters' history, flaws, etc., sometimes I forget that I neglected to explain this stuff to the reader!), and some rather stuffy dialog in places.

Even though I already edited for all this kind of stuff, having an INDEPENDENT AND UNBIASED third party read it and give feedback was priceless, especially since she's in the publishing industry and has a clue as to the kind of advice an author really needs. My friends and family I've recruited just aren't critical enough with me. My husband's great at pointing out spelling and grammar errors, but he's not a trained editor. The best he's been able to do is tell me whether he likes it or not (he likes it, but he sort of has to, right?).

My mom is an English teacher, but even she lacks objectivity when "grading" my work. She picks up on misplaced commas, but she has a hard time saying anything negative about plot, pacing, character development, world building, etc. She is my mother, after all. What did I expect?

Another friend is reading it right now, but I think she's reading it for enjoyment rather than as an editorial review.

What I really need is an army of beta readers who all have a stinking clue what the publishing industry demands from a novel. Does my dialog need to be tightened up? Does the pacing lag in a certain place, or is it too fast to keep up with somewhere else? Do I need to describe some aspect of the world better so you don't feel lost? Or maybe a joke one of the characters tells is so bad it makes you want to throw the book in a lake and pretend you never saw it in the first place? That's the kind of advice I really need. Are there any people out in the universe who are good at that kind of thing? Any who would like to read a contemporary/urban fantasy novel and then get to tell me why it sucked, and what you think it needs in order to not suck?

I'd be grateful for a few new victims volunteers.

Otherwise, I might be stuck in the circular land of revisions for the rest of my life. It's like Groundhog Day. Round and round, the same story, slightly different each time, and never a chance at a new day, or a different story.

Also, I tried to sleep last night, like I usually do, but my cat was apparently hosting a parade in the living room (which is directly over my bed). It sounded like he had cat rugby scrimmage with a jingly ball. This went on for nearly an hour before he felt tired enough to come to bed. At that point, he happily curled up ON MY LEGS. This was not good, either. Cats are very warm. Not to mention, if you move and upset them, they have a multitude of pointy weapons at their disposal, and they're more than willing to use them.

Point of fact: The other night after dinner, Tim lingered at the table while I cleared away the dishes. He was finishing his food, when the cat decided something must be wrong. Tim's coat was hanging on the back of his chair, and the cat slipped under the coat and prepared his attack. I was in the kitchen, and heard Tim scream, and saw the cat bolt down the stairs like a chipmunk on crack. I ran out to the table to see what was wrong. I asked what the problem was, and Tim looked murderous. "The cat just clawed me in the ass," he snarled.

I tried to look sympathetic. I swear I did. So did Lulu. I bit my lip. We even left the room. After thirty seconds of snorting and chortling,  he grumbled. "You can laugh." So we did. For like ten minutes. I wish stuff like that happened more often.

In happier news, It is GORGEOUS here today. *waves hello at spring robins outside* It's 61 right now, sunny, with wispy white clouds smeared across the blue, blue sky. I think I'll take the laptop outside to work. I've given myself one final read-through before I query again, and then dive in to revise the second novel to match up with the changes I made to the first. And then I can jump on the Devil May Care carousel and ride in circles for a few weeks with that story. Dragon Hunter takes place in early spring (technically, it's the first week of April, but it FEELS like the first week of April outside today). I think it's the perfect day to move back out to the deck.

Toodles and La-Di-Da!

The Icks

So I've spent the past day and a half with a case of the rampaging icks. Tim had it on Saturday, and passed it along to me so I wouldn't feel left out, I guess. I had the dizzies, I couldn't eat, and I could barely sit up. I squished down in the Comfy Chair and did my best to reread/edit, but I didn't get anywhere until about 9 pm last night. I finally started to feel better, but of course by then I had to get some sleep or I'd be sick again today. I finally packed it in around 10:45 and eventually did get some rest.

I spent a good portion of the day watching TV. I have no idea what I watched, other than the movie Local Hero, which was on yesterday morning. I have no idea what was on the rest of the day, since I could barely hold my head up to watch. But I do love Local Hero. If you like Scotland at all, it's a beautiful movie with a lot of oddball characters. And an injured rabbit, as well.

Tim made me tea, which at least gave me enough caffeine to focus on reading, but it didn't do much for my stomach. Hopefully today will be better. There's nothing on the TV right now, so at least I'm not distracted, other than by the Pretty Internets.

Anyway, I suppose I should get back to work. I've only got about 50 more pages to read today, and then format the book for the kindle so Tim can read it. Yay!

I'm kind of hoping to get a nap at some point today, but I doubt it'll happen. And we didn't deliver a single box of cookies all weekend, which means they're all still down in my office calling my name. SHUT UP YOU SUGARY DELIGHTS!!!

On another food note, the cat is still a pastrami addict. I actually ran over him this morning because I didn't realize he was wrapped around my ankles while I made Lulu's lunch. Poor thing. He's going to give himself a kitty coronary if he keeps eating like that. Not because he actually got any pastrami, but because I scared the crap out of him when I moved my feet, and he skittered and scampered out of the kitchen like he was on fire.

I've been trying to cobble together the synopsis on this read-through, taking notes as I go along. That's probably my LEAST favorite part of writing a novel. It reminds me of having to do book reports when I was in elementary school, only worse. At least a book report wanted you to leave the ending out, enticing the reader to read the book for himself. Not so in a synopsis. They also want all major plot twists and turns, and they want it in 2-5 pages (sometimes even less!). HEY! THAT'S WHY I WROTE A 300 PAGE BOOK!!! It took 300 pages to describe all those plot twists so they made sense, but a synopsis doesn't have to make sense, really. It just has to show the main characters going through the story.

You have to leave out minor characters, the HOW, and often the WHY. It makes for really crappy reading, but it serves its purpose: showing what happens throughout the book in just a few pages. You don't go into any kind of detail, but throw in just enough for the synopsis to sound like a coherent plot. IT IS HARD!

So there you go, my synopsis complaint. Anyone out there actually like to write synopses? I'd like to hear about it.

And that's all for today. Or at least for now.

Words: 98,294
Pages: 314
Edit Reread Page: 251