Things to Do Today

• Go to the gym.
• Read through at least 100 pages of Out of the Frying Pan.
• Answer various work-related e-mails.
• Do dishes/make big salad for lunch/cut up watermelon/do dishes/make dinner (Trader Joe’s curry chicken over brown rice with Thai soup, the latter already meade)/do dishes again.
• Scoop cat boxes.
• Update GWW packing list/meet with Morgana, Brian, and Robin to make GWW plans.
• Cheer for Ken as he runs the LOE Rally.
• Answer various personal- and SCA-related e-mails.
• Try not to be sad that nobody wanted to see James Marsters and Ghost of a Robot tonight. Curse my evil bad eyesight. Sigh.
• Snuggle with kitties, and write a blog about them.

Energized and aggressive

Another week—and I’m energized and excited to hit the ground running!

I’m setting myself some aggressive goals for June, and trying a new way of keeping myself on track. When I was working on the latest CES assignment, which was a novella, I knew the deadline was a little tight because of various travel I had planned in June. Plus the client requested to see each 5000-word section as I finished it. So I set up a calendar, blocked out the days I wouldn’t get much, if any, writing done, and figured out how much I had to write on each of the other days to get the job done. I also noted what the total word count would be when I hit each day’s goal.

For some reason, this visual worked exceptionally well. Sure, I had to modify it when things changed, but that was easy enough, and kept me focused.

So I’ve done the same thing for June, noting all the projects I want to work on—and how many days I’m giving myself to work on each one. Saying “I’ll do X this week” is less effective for me than seeing “X on MTW, Y on ThF, and Z on SSu” blocked out on a calendar. Dunno why, but there you have it. Just the way my brain seems to work.

My overall goals for June—which, as I said, are aggressive—are…

• get an overdue story to the editor (who kindly allowed me a few grace days)
• get everything done for Out of the Frying Pan and back to Teresa
• do the edits/rewrites for Waking the Witch and get them to the editor who requested them
• write Chapter 3 of Seasoned With Danger and submit it to the first wave of publishers
• do a brief polish through What Beck’ning Ghost (because I wrote it 20 years ago [holy crap!] and I want to make sure nothing’s extremely dated in it), write a fresh proposal, and submit it to the first wave of publishers
• write a story for the Mountain Magic anthology
• write a story fort the Crossed Genres anthology
• write a story for Alison’s Bondage anthology
• write (or at least start) a story for Kristina’s Dream Lovers anthology
• pitch rose beads article to Renaissance Magazine (if time)
• prep “In Her Hands” for Kindle, etc. (if time)

Novels take precedence over short stories, although I’ve blocked out days for each story, in between novel work. I figure that’ll also give my brain time to recharge between each type of project.

So that’ll be two new novel proposals in the mail, along with the two already in progress, and four new stories.

I’m not sure if I’m ready to publicly talk about my bigger goal for the year… For now I’ll just say that it’s also aggressive, and novel-focused. It’s been too easy for me to use story deadlines as an excuse to put of working on this novel or that one. But that’s not where I need to focus to make my career goals.

I’ve got the big picture more firmly in mind now, and I’m breaking it down into smaller and smaller steps so that I can achieve it.

Now, back to that short story!

(Oh, and I'm so chuffed: the CES client loved the novella! Yay!)

When it rains, it pours…

…and you know how much I love dancing in the rain!

So after I turned off the alarm this morning, I dozed off again (I hadn’t slept well), and as I came out of that doze, I started thinking about the various projects I’m working on.

I have a mystery short story due at the end of the month, and I think I finally have an actual idea for it, so I do want to get that off my plate. Then I’ve got requested revisions from editors for OOTFP and WtW, and I’m waiting to hear from Teresa on the former… And I thought about how I did a push to get a bunch of short stories done a while back, and now maybe I should do a novel push, and get both of those edits done, and then get proposal packages written and submitted (with the accompanying editor research) for What Beck’ning Ghost (an older novel I want to send out into the world again; it does need some minor tweaks, but nobody’s going to ask to see more unless I start submitting it) and Seasoned With Danger (a new novel, two chapters and proposal already written).

That seemed like a good plan. And you know what they say about plans, don’t you?

“And then [Robbie Burns] must have turned his attention to the other animal mentioned in that line of poetry. If you think back to it, ‘The best laid plans of mice and men…’ Exactly which mice plans was he really honing in here on? The best laid ones go aglae, some of the worse laid ones are okay? Some of them get through? He was fucking off his trolley.” (Eddie Izzard)

Because this is what was in my In Box this morning:

• an e-mail from Teresa answering the questions about OOTFP, which means that bumped up to the top of the queue (next to the short story)
• a Custom Erotica Source assignment for a novella (wooh!)
• a short story request (“Thank you for sending story A to anthology X. Submissions for anthology Z are thin, by the way, if you’re interested…”)
• an e-mail asking if I would read from my nominated titles at the Lammy (Lambda Literary Awards) Finalists reading at Skylight Books in Hollywood on May 10. I have stories in Lesbian Cowboys and Where the Girls Are, both nominated in the Lesbian Erotica category. How cool is that?! Of course I said yes.  :-)  I hope I get to read “Queens Up” from Lesbian Cowboys, because it’s so much fun to read aloud. I’ll send an official announcement about that (time, address, etc.) once I know more.

So now the top priorities are (not necessarily in order)…

• the mystery story
• OOTFP
• researching/sketching out the CES assignment
• writing the CES assignment
• WtW (once OOTFP is back to Teresa)

You know what, though? I’m totally jazzed. Bring it on!

A good life

Oh, so much goodness over the past few days!

Monday night was my birthday dinner. Not only were there wonderful people there (including Lareej, who was working a show that night and couldn’t stay, but drove all the way from Ventura to give me a hug and sit for a few minutes before dashing back), but there was suuuushi and, as I posted earlier, a dessert made out of Stitch’s head.

And there were prezzies, like an acorn teapot (thank you, Tomi!) and a Wendy Froud book and chocolate/rose love potion scrub (thank you, Morgana and Brian!) and booze (thank you, Mattea and Robey and Albra!), and handmade cards (thank you, Egan!) and a writing book (thank you, Erica!).

The next day, Ken and I went to the LA Zoo, which I’d never been to before. People, it is huge. Enormous. I had no idea. My back was killing me by the end of the afternoon! (It was uphill both ways, don’t’cha know.) But oh, there were otters and birds of prey (Russian eagles!) and tigers and lions and ocelots and jaguars and…! Although, despite what the map said, there were no slow lorises. They’re doing a lot of construction there right now and some of the displays have been moved around, so it’s possible the slow lorises are on hiatus….

I pondered and pondered what kind of food I wanted for dinner, since traffic was going to be horrible and we figured it would be best to top somewhere on our way home. Finally I decided Greek, and my handy dandy iPhone map program found me a great little Mediterranean place, and lo, it was good.

The only minor thing that marred my birthday is that Styx’s website has been revamped and even though I’m still a Lounge member, I didn’t get my annual birthday e-mail from the boys. It always made me squee quietly. Oh, I knew full well it was automated and the band had no knowledge of it, but a girl can always fantasize. I have a very rich fantasy life (for which they pay me, I might point out).

Wednesday and Thursday were mostly work days. I’ve been steadily productive, getting a work e-mail account set up, getting the rest of my books into my Amazon store (if you buy my work directly from there, I get a teeny tiny amount of money), that sort of thing.

On Friday Ken dropped me off at Borders in Thousand Oaks so I could meet up with Christine! whom I hadn’t seen in six months! for a writing day. Well, it was mostly a catching-up day for us, but that’s okay, too. We talked life and writing and more writing and plans (we want to jointly apply to Soapstone) and all manner of things. And she, bless her, brought me Yule and birthday presents (I had for her only a birthday present): a plaque, a pair of earrings of hers that I’d coveted and she says she never wears (copper crescent moons with silver spirals) and a tea infuser and a mug with a tea infuser insert.

The latter made me decide that my afternoon tea each day should be something interesting and different. I’ll do PG Tips for breakfast, but I’m going to really enjoy and savor my afternoon tea. I have loose leaf teas and white teas and who knows what else, and I want to be drinking them! Today I had Glengettie.

Anyway, after lunch Christine had to leave, and I hung out at Borders for another couple hours, working. I pitched some editing ideas (phone confab on Wednesday! fingers crossed!), submitted some reprints to audio and/or online markets, read the first three chapters of Heat Wave (the Castle book. Okay, that wasn’t exactly “working”…!), and started re-reading Out of the Frying Pan because Teresa and I have to get that back out, and the delay is entirely on my lap right now. Time to pull my weight.

Eventually I pinged Ken and he came to get me. He’d dropped me off because he needed the car to help Morgana’s mother move stuff from her house to her new apartment, because he is The Awesome. Upon realizing that we hadn’t, in fact, remembered to shop for food and had, in fact, eaten all our leftovers, we made salad and ordered a pizza. Damn Pizza Hut’s $10 Any Pizza deal! But I ate only two slices while we curled up and watched TV.

Oh, and waiting for me at home were two exciting things! The brand-new Return of the Strange Animal remastered CD/DVD package arrived in the mail! Mmmm, vintage Gowan goodness! And my birthday present from Ken (which had been delayed in the mail): the Castle book! I howled when I saw it.

So, this morning I checked e-mail and discovered our friend Lev from Portland was going to be performing with his Morris side (team) at Heritage Square, just a few blocks away. (I knew he was going to be in town for a Morris Ale, but hadn’t gotten the local performance detail until just then!) So we took a jaunt over there, enjoyed the performances, and on the way back wandered through the park, where they were having an Earth Day celebration. Picked up a map of bike trails in the area, yay!

I’d thrown in the fixings for potato leek soup into the slow cooker this morning, and the house smelled so good today. Over a week ago at the farmer’s market, I’d bought leeks on a whim, with the idea that we’d learn how to cook something new. After perusing various recipe sites online, it became clear to us that leeks are mostly good for potato leek soup. Live and learn! So we had sandwiches and soup for supper, and the soup was as good as it smelled. Definitely a keeper.

Meanwhile, Ken crawled around under the house looking at wiring, because he’s figured out how to make our fabby office-sized laser printer (aka The Behemouth) work here. It runs on 240 (British) power (wattage? I have no idea) as opposed to American 120 power, and I just typed up a long explanation that nobody would be interested in, so suffice to say he can run a cord under the house and the printer will work in my study downstairs, meaning we’ll be able to print double-sided and 11x17 and all that groovy stuff that makes geeks like us salivate. It’s especially good because I have a bunch of novel partials to get in the mail. Soon…! I didn’t marry Ken for his engineering degree, but damned if he doesn’t impress me on a regular basis. :-)

Tonight we went out to see Alice in Wonderland with Morgana and Brian, and then the two of us dashed off to the cheap theatre to see the only—and very late—showing of Sherlock Holmes, both of which I really wanted to see on the big screen, and both of which I adored, although for different reasons. (Alice for the visuals and the actors; SH for the plotting, the setting/costuming, and Robert Downey Jr.; and both for the humor.)

And now it is well past time for sleep…

Marching forward

I felt universally crappy yesterday—thought I was coming down with a cold, because my throat felt wonky and I had the energy of a newborn kitten—so I self-medicated with a hot bubble bath and the Nora Roberts that finally popped up in my Holds queue at the library (Vision in White).

I also decided, looking at my schedule for this month, not to go to San Diego with Ken this weekend, where he’ll be doing his IBR talk again. Besides, he would’ve had to take the extra gas tank off (because it sits where my seat is supposed to be), and that would be silly because attendees will want to see it and poke at it and so forth.

That said, we’ve scheduled a mini-vacation down there near the end of April: two days to play (we have free passes to Sea World, and maybe we’ll hit the Wild Animal Park and/or the Zoo, and we also want to see The Marston House), then we’ll do an 8-hour rally (together! Because 8 hours is as long as I ever want to do a rally, really), and finish up with an SCA event in Orange County.

Before that… Yep, this month is getting pretty busy. The weekend after next is Black Oak Lodge, our Shire’s annual weekend-long event. We’ll be heading up early on Friday to help with set up, and I’m running Gate. Since we always help with clean up and tear down, we’ll get home after lunch on Sunday. In terms of work, the weekend’s mostly shot (plus Thursday will be packing and Sunday afternoon/evening will include unpacking, laundry, etc.).

The following Tuesday, we’re motoring up to Monterey to visit my sister and her family, which will include the Aquarium! because what’s the point of going to Monterey without going to the aquarium and seeing the otters? (Okay, yes, seeing my sister and her family, since they moved there last August and we still haven’t made it up there. But still.) We’ll come home on Thursday with my mom, who will have flown to Monterey the week before. She’s staying with us for a week.

The weekend after she leaves is King’s Hunt, another weekend-long SCA event, although because we don’t camp, we’ll probably just go for Saturday. The Monday after that is my birthday dinner (although my birthday is actually Tuesday, but that’s Textiles Guild night). Which reminds me, I have to send the invitation…

Anyway. Some busy weeks coming up, so I have to grab all the work time in between.

• I’ve got three short story deadlines at the end of the month. One story’s in progress and should be done this week, if not within the next day or so.
• I have novel submissions to do (got all the Waking the Witch e-mail ones done, but I have to buy more ink cartridges to do some postal ones; today and tomorrow will be catching up on Out of the Frying Pan, and then it’s on to Possessed, Undressed, and in a Mess.
• I have to get back to work on Out of the Frying Pan so Teresa and I can get it back out to the editor who said she’d look at it again with some revisions.
• I’ve got some nonfiction and editing proposals to get moving on.

So that’ll keep me out of trouble for a little while. :-)

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Edited to add: I swear to you, we had a conversation last night about the 8-hour rally and I expressed how excited I was that we could run it together. But apparently he/we aren't running the rally; he's helping run the rally. WTF? He has no explanation for why my excitement didn't cause him to explain this last night. So that'll be 8 hours I sit in a corner of a BMW dealership (which usually have nice comfy sitting areas and tea-making facilities) and work!

If it's Saturday, we must be in...?

IBR Update: Well, crap. Both of Ken’s GPSs have crapped out. On one, the touch screen really wasn’t working already, but he used it as a backup/rerouting machine while the other had his main planned route with all the bonus locations he planned to hit. The latter one apparently went kablooey. So he bought a cheap one at Walmart. The upshot is that he’ll have to plan a route and stick to it, as opposed to making some changes/new decisions based on how things are progressing. Which, alas, is where he really shines.

~ ~ ~

The other day the clerk in Trader Joe’s asked me if I had any plans for the weekend. I stared at him blankly. What is this “weekend” you speak of? I work most days, taking days off when something specific is happening. The fact is, today is the first day all week that I have had things hard scheduled (other than Textile Guild on Tuesday night).

First I went to Elizabeth’s with a bunch of stuff for her to sell on eBay (I’ll be making garb for her son in exchange). Then I had a confab with Teresa. In a few minutes I’m off to the vet to pick up Eostre.

Then tomorrow is the IBR checkpoint in Santa Ana, and my only hope is that Ken arrives early enough that I can give him all his stuff (tires, food, etc.) and still get home before it gets dark. Originally I planned to stay the night at his mom’s if it got late, but it looks like I’ll need to be home to give Eostre subcu fluids…

The bad vs. the good

Things that are making me grumpy:

Stupid cold. It hasn’t gotten really bad, but it’s annoying. Can’t breathe through my nose w/o nasal spray. Can’t do much for an extended period of time w/o feeling exhausted. Etc. My productivity this week has been abysmal.

Writing. It’s going soooo slowly and I have soooo much to do. See above re: “Stupid cold” for the reason. Writing with a sloggy brain is just sloggy. And kind of oogy.

My lovely long and picture-filled journal entry about my weekend. Again, see above. It’s…half written, maybe?

Exercise. See above, yet again. Grrr…

Things that are making me happy:

I’ve been getting the proposals for Possessed, Undressed, and in a Mess in the mail. It’s a lot of work, because I have to research each editor and customize the letter to her. Some editors have recently bought work similar to PUM, or have said they’re looking for similar things in recent interviews. Others, not so much. But I’m still getting a few out each day—plus I got two more Out of the Frying Pan proposals in the mail. (I’ll be going through the old ones after PUM is done and re-querying a bunch.)

My Spells jar! For years now, I’ve been looking for a ceramic jar that says “Spells” on it. I saw one…I have no idea how long ago, or where, or when, but I remember that they existed, but when I started looking for one, pfft. Well, a few months ago I somehow ended up looking at someone’s Flickr photos from a Ren faire, and saw a booth of jars. So I e-mailed my friend Sara, who’s big in the faire in Phoenix, and asked her to keep an eye out for one for me. (This was before I knew we were going to faire this year.) She found a ceramic merchant who had jars, but not a Spells jar, and asked him, and he offered to make one! And it arrived today, and it is perfect! It’s black but has purple-y sparkles on it, and I’m dying to know if she told the merchant that purple is my favorite color or whether it was just sheer fate. Anyway, I’ll take a picture soon. Perfect Spells jar, for the win!

Faire! I haven’t been to a Ren faire in years and years, largely because I do SCA, so why got to faire? We were supposed to go to Northern Faire last year with Morgana and Brian and Laurel and John, but a Styx concert and Ken’s work intervened. I didn’t even think I had anything to wear (and Brian didn’t want to do pirate, so Morgana said she wasn’t going to do pirate), but I found a green bodice in my garb closet that miraculously fits me, and I have my purple chemise and green and purple skirts and fun Celtic-y jewelry and pins that say “Everyone is watching you look at my chest” and “Careful, men have suffocated between these,” and I’m really looking forward to this tomorrow! (My cold notwithstanding. Reminder to self: Walk slowly, and sit down a lot.)

Our slow cooker. I hate to cook, and Ken and I are the types to suddenly look up from our work, announce hunger, and then realize we haven’t prepped anything. Cooking just takes too damn long, you know? But with the slow cooker, if we actually get up in time and put stuff in it, it’s like magic! Come supper time, there is food ready to eat! It’s like…like…like going to a restaurant, except we don’t have to put pants on! Tonight it’s a salsa chicken to shred for tacos (dayum, it was good!), and Sunday we’ll use the leftovers to make soup (in the slow cooker). Sing the nomnom song with me!

The hot tub. Ahhhh…

Nyquil. Say no more.

As usual, the good outweighs the bad, and now I’m off to sleep the drug-filled, dream-weird sleep of the Nyquil damned!

And so it begins...

And so it begins… Our first rejection for Out of the Frying Pan. A photocopied form letter in which the editor didn’t even bother to scribble in the novel title after the “Re:”. Ouch.

Ah well. Onwards.

Alison Tyler recently namechecked me in talking about rejections; how some writers never mention them whereas others (like me) list them along with the acceptances. You know, it never occurred to me not to mention them. This journal is, among other things, a writer’s log, and rejections are a pretty big part of the business. While I’m in no way implying that writers who don’t list them are somehow being untruthful, I don’t see how I could accurately portray my own writing journey without mentioning them.

Plus, quite honestly, this journal also serves a backup of my records, since I have to be pretty obsessive about tracking submissions and acceptances and rejections for tax purposes!

<>-<>-<>

The headache lingers as a bad memory in the back of my brain, threatening to return at the slightest provocation. So far, so good, though. I’ve been able to be reasonably productive today, all things considered:

• Paid bills
  
• Read 10 stories
  
• Cleaned out In Box
  
• Finished tweaks on Teresa’s and my next Lust Bites article (to be posted Wednesday!)
  
• Uploaded and labeled photos from two Styx shows (the only ones at which we were able to take pictures. That’s it. There are no more.).
  
• Got adjusted
  
• Um, I know there was more, but I can’t remember now. Dishes, etc. Dinner was leftovers from last night (new batch of potatoes, but Ken handled those)—even better the second time around!
  

Tomorrow’s plans:

• Toss the makings for lowfat jambalaya in the crockpot
  
• Go to the DMV to pick up plates for the old car
  
• Get a massage
  
• Pick up a few things at the grocery store
  
• Go to bed even earlier than tonight in preparation for getting up at 3:30 a.m. to get to the airport in time on Thursday. (I apparently was not in my right mind when I made the flight reservations. Jaysus. I am going to be a frakking zombie.)
  

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Currently Reading: Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie, Holly Black
Lately Listened To: not a whole lot, actually. Huh.
Recently Watched: Ghost Hunters International, Clean Sweep

Dratted Mercury

Kensington rejected Out of the Frying Pan, which they’ve had for almost a year after requesting the full manuscript less than a week after we mailed the partial, in a long letter about how they loved the writing and loved the book and have no place to put it and were reluctant to let it go.

Frak.

Short story rejections from Æon for “Seeds of Hope” and from Fantasy Magazine for “Matchmaker.”

Okay, but in good news, there was a local Styx show I didn’t have tickets for (they went on sale with no announcement, so by the time I heard, pffft), and I popped a note on the Styxworld board just in case someone might have something vaguely reasonable, and two different friends had single front row tickets near each other. Sheez, how portentous is that? Well, they’re on Tommy’s side, not Lawrence’s, but front-row tickets to a show I didn’t think I’d get to go to is enough for me right now!

This good news is not trumping the novel rejection.

<>-<>-<>

Check out the Oregon Coast Writers website!

<>-<>-<>

Four stories in the mail today. I am nothing if not stubborn. I also brainstormed a list of the next publishers to which to send OOTFP, and will do so once Teresa and I confer.

<>-<>-<>

It was a mostly good but still odd in some ways kind of weekend. Lev & Gayle are visiting Morgana & Brian, so M&B threw a tea party Saturday afternoon for all of us who knew Lev & Gayle Back When (Back When being before they moved to Oregon 14 years ago).

The odder parts were that Mercury going retrograde really did seem to affect communication that day. Several times I said things that were misconstrued, causing people to get mildly testy. Nothing major, but it made me want to slink off hide each time, in part because I didn’t understand how I’d managed to upset the other person. Plus there were several times when I was talking and someone just started talking over me. I know they didn’t realize they were doing it, and I’m not the type to start talking louder or call attention to the issue because I don’t want to embarrass the other person.

Also, the tea was mostly sweets and only a few savories, so even though I ate lunch before I came over, I knew I’d need a decent dinner. I brought up dinner early, but it took a long time to coordinate people (we eventually decided to get take-out Thai, but some people had to spend time commenting on the small print on the Chinese menu before they decided what to order from the Thai menu, etc.) and I started to feel unwell. Unfortunately, when I get that way, I don’t think as coherently, so I couldn’t actually come up with “Hey, Morgana, do have a piece of cheese or something I can nibble on?” I just curled up in a corner and stopped talking so I didn’t snap at anybody, which is what I’m likely to do if my blood sugar is low… (And sweets just make me nauseous in that situation, so Brian’s repeated offering of cookies to everyone didn’t help either! LOL) Eventually food arrived and it was all much better, but I never fully recovered my equilibrium

Of course, then we came home and watched Torchwood and it was all sorts of John Barrowman/James Marsters yummy goodness! And a day that ends with that is certainly not a bad day at all.

Sunday Ken and I were both tired and draggy, although we did manage to do a million loads of laundry. That’s about all I remember. Just being draggy but slooowly getting stuff done.

And that’s pretty much all I remember. Sunday seems like a long time ago…

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Currently Reading: A Rush of Wings, Adrian Phoenix (fellow OCW-er!)
Lately Listened To: for some reason, Tom Petty’s “The Great Wide Open” is stuck in my head
Recently Watched: Alias

Turn of the page

Words Written: OOTFP edits
Writing Stats: Rejection from Cemetery Dance for “Queen of Hearts, Hand of Fate”
Exercise: day off, although I cleaned litter boxes and took out trash and recycling—does that count?

Egads, April already! March just flew by so fast. But it was good things—coming off the rush of the concerts, to dive into the rush of the BIAW workshop… It’s just been heads-down working since then—I’ve clean out my e-mail lists folder except for one, and I’ve got a few more e-mails to go in the normal In Box. Work is mostly caught up (and will be ending sometime soon, or at least slowing down towards ending…I’ll know more by the end of the week). And while my intense workouts with the trainer still hurt, I’m not hurting quite as bad afterwards!

Yesterday I went to my first SCA event in longer than I care to ponder. Except for the wind that kicked up the dust and made my eyes feeling like someone was scratching them with sandpaper, I had a truly lovely time. I set up another kumihimo cord (for Kingdom awards—we try to give all our awards on handmade cords) and wove and chatted with all my wonderful friends. A much-appreciated day off.

So, I just signed up for four novel workshops over the next year. Dean’s starting ‘em up again, and I’m a sucker for external deadlines, so…! That’s on top of the one in November in San Diego. So, two novels between now and the beginning of November (one due by 10/1, not sure when the other is due). I’m hoping we can organize another BIAW in late October to overlap with that quarter’s novel workshop. Anyway, two novels? Piece o’cake. I may have to table the heavy editing on yet another novel (which I’d mentally scheduled in after I finish WSWL), but it’s all about the flexibility, baybee!

Good stuff, this life thing.

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Currently Reading: Poison Study, Maria V. Snyder
Lately Listened To: Influence, Shaw/Blades
Recently Watched: Northern Exposure

Done!

The draft of Out of the Frying Pan is done! The proposal is enveloped and will be mailed today, and Teresa's also going to pitch the book at the New England RWA conference this weekend!

But, no rest for the weary... We still need to do a clean-up pass through the rest of the manuscript (shouldn't be a lot of work, but it's fiddly back-and-forth stuff), and I also have a short story that must be written and submitted today. I've also got a couple of anthology deadlines in the next month.

Then it's back to With Soft Whispers Laden, which I mostly set aside in the crunch to get OOTFP done, because it was hurting my brain too much to switch between erotic romantic comedy and menacing gothic-esque paranormal romance.

So I win my Beautiful Trophy for this quarter, and plan to get WSWL done by the end of June for another Beautiful Trophy!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Words Written: OOTFP ~1300
Writing Stats: Mostly a sale… “A Few Things…” may not be fitting into G is for Games, but the editor thinks it could be great in K is for Kinky. She promises it will get into one of the alphabet books, at any rate!
Exercise: 1 hr w/personal trainer

Busy, busy. Ken’s home for a couple days, mainly to pick up his new motorcycle. He arrived this morning (actually passing me at an intersection while I was on my way home from the chiropractor) and went out to a movie (Music & Lyrics, perhaps the funniest thing I’ve seen in years. Not an award-winning movie, but if you like early-80s pop…oh my gods.) and lunch with Morgana and I.

I then had about an hour to make some phone calls and answer some e-mail before I dashed off to the gym. See, last week I got an early birthday present for myself: I hired a personal trainer for two months. I had a crap birthday last year. I spent a good chunk of it in the emergency room. This is not going to happen to me this year, nor ever again, if I have anything to do with it. When the head trainer asked me what my goal was, I said “To not be in constant pain anymore.” To his credit, he blinked only once or twice before recommending three trainers who have rehab experience.

I’m not going to talk about it much more, though. Personally, I don’t find people’s exercise logs interesting reading, including my own. (This is absolutely not meant as a commentary about what anybody chooses to put in their personal journal/blog. I love hearing about people’s successes, I love hearing about new workout things they’ve tried, but a daily listing of statistics doesn’t float my personal boat.) I’ll just keep mentioning in my stats above what I’ve done recently, because I do look back over the journal from time to time.

Plus, I’m not interested in obsessing about weight on a daily basis. That way lies madness. Weight fluctuates during the day, during the week, during the month for reasons that may have nothing to do with how much one ate or how often one worked out. I’m more interested in toning (especially my core—again, so my back stops hurting), and I’m more interested in the bigger picture. Today Katrina, my trainer, gave me a strength test, checked my body fat, took my measurements, and took “before” pictures. I want to see how all that has changed two months from now. Not next week.

Anyway. So tomorrow, Ken picks up his new bike, makes some modifications, and then we go to the custom seat guy to get our butts measured for custom seats. I also have another trainer appt and a massage scheduled. Wednesday Ken leaves, but I have a chiro appt and an eye appt (and with the dilation, I’ll be unable to work for a bit afterwards). Thursday I have a work conference call and another trainer appt and Lick’n’Stick/Healing Circle, and Friday…gods, I don’t even remember now. Chiro. Something else? Then Saturday, my first SCA event in months, which means I have to find all my stuff for that.

Meanwhile—and most importantly—Teresa and I are on the last chapter of OOTFP! She’s done a pass through the first few chapters to clean up some items we noted, and I’ll do a pass, and then we’ll tweak the synopsis (now that the book’s done) and get it sent out. I’ll get my damn Beautiful Trophy this quarter, by gods! And hey, maybe we’ll sell this book to our dream editor. :-)

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Currently Reading: Savannah Blues, Mary Kay Andrews
Lately Listened To: Au Quebec, Home Field, Gowan
Recently Watched: Northern Exposure

Away and home

Words Written: “The Light at the End,” ~600
Writing Stats: Received, signed, and prepped to mail two contracts: “Stranger to my Shores,” Paranormal Erotica anthology (as Sophie), and “When the Rancher Needs a Loan,” Cowboy Lover: Erotic Tales of the Wild West anthology (as Andrea Dale). Received a rather preachy rejection from Clarkesworld for “Seeds of Hope.”
Exercise: walking through airports

I’m at LAX, waiting for my slightly delayed flight to Oxnard to be called. I’m tired, so the delay especially sucks. They looked for a volunteer to give up his/her seat in exchange for a round-trip ticket anywhere in the US, and if I wasn’t so tired, I’d take it and just rent a car. Oh well.

Part of me doesn’t want to go home. I really wanted to stay with Ken in Portland for a few days, working and relaxing and easing back into reality rather than hitting it full speed. I don’t have that luxury, though… Plus I really miss the cats. And my chiropractor and my massage therapist…

The week was incredibly successful and productive. Teresa and have two chapters left to finish OOTFP. (When we got there, we didn’t think we’d finish it there; then we thought we might; then we slowed down a little.) We’ll get the proposal in the mail this week, I think, and then get the draft finished and polished by the end of the month.

I also rewrote the beginning of WSWL, getting about 4000 words down (some new, some taken from the previous version). I realized it needed to be both darker and richer, and I had to start over to really weave that in—I needed that new info in order to be able to move ahead.

I also finished one story, which Teresa kindly critiqued and will be in the mail this week; wrote half of a joint Lust Bites article on collaboration; and started another short story on the plane today.

Everyone else at the retreat wrote lots of words and broke through barriers, and the energy was just amazing. Last time, we all stayed in our rooms to write, but when we hit the common area, we tended to hang out too much and not be productive. This time, we decided to try two optional two-hour quiet joint writing periods per day, from 10 a.m. to noon and 8 to 10 p.m. Well, the first day, all the women sat down and did it…and we never left. We did almost all of our writing in the common area all day, every day. Occasionally someone would hit their room for an hour or two, and Teresa and I did retreat to our room when we needed to brainstorm and confer. On the other hand, the two men in the group almost never came out of their rooms…

We ate out every night, with Kris & Dean and Chris and Steve, so we had lots of great seafood and great conversation. K&D invited us to bring take-and-bake pizzas and drinks to their place one evening, so I got to see how they’ve transformed the workshop house back into their home (they have two houses and one large office [former garage, I think] with several rooms). My usual bedroom is now Kris’s closet. That took a little getting used to…

It’s been almost exactly five years since I took my first OCW workshop, the Master Class, which changed the way I write and the way I approach and think about writing and my career. For a while, it seemed like nothing was changing, that it hadn’t had an effect. But five years on (and quite a few workshops later!), I’ve sold two novels and I’ve sold more short stories every year. It snuck up on me, strangely enough. But, as we discussed one night, you’re never satisfied. You’re always raising the bar, striving for a greater goal. To lose that would be to not need to write anymore. I can’t wait to see what the next five years will bring.

So we reluctantly left Lincoln City on Sunday after the weekly writerly lunch, swung by Hillsboro to pick up Ken, and went to an airport hotel to drop off Laura and get Teresa checked in. Then Ken, Teresa, and I went to the Kennedy School McMenamin’s to meet up with erotica author and fellow Lust Biter Shanna Germaine for dinner, drinks, and much laughter. Shanna’s a blast! Just a bundle of energy, with a great sense of humor, an incredible focus (she writes, edits, teaches…I can’t keep up with all of it!), and a keen mind. We sat there for hours, not wanting to leave despite how tired we were. We finally, reluctantly dragged ourselves away, and Ken and I didn’t get back to Hillsboro until after midnight.

So now I’m almost home, not wanting to get distracted by bills and e-mails and the rest of the real world. I’ve really got to focus if I’m going to get WSWL done in time for the novel workshop in May (manuscripts will be due in April so everyone has time to read them before the workshop). Plus I miss Ken. But he’ll be home towards the end of the month to pick up his new shiny motorcycle (he’s abandoning his beloved K1200LT for a sleeker, peppier GT), and then I may just ride back up there with him so I can spend my birthday in the Pacific Northwest.

<>-<>-<>

Home now. Despite the fact that I watched my suitcase get loaded onto the plane at PDX, it didn’t arrive with me at OXR. But they’ve delivered it, and all is well. I’ve picked up some groceries, eaten dinner, talked with Ken, watched a bit of TV, scritched the cats, and done some catching up in e-mail and whatnot. I’m exhausted, so I don’t think I have the brainpower to write any more today. I’ll just hit the ground running tomorrow…

Despite some things, it’s good to be home. In part because there’s still Styx confetti all over my bedroom floor…

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Currently Reading: Staying Dead, Laura Anne Gilman
Lately Listened To: Big Bang Theory, Styx; RWA session
Recently Watched: Without a Trace