I needed a guy car. I’m still doing the proposal, though I’m into the last few hundred words. I figured Mustang, but I thought maybe there was a better guy car out there. So I tossed the words “guy car” into search, and got this page. Guy and Chick Cars.
The number one guy car? Well, see for yourself.
I’ve been up since 3 AM. At the moment, I’m writing on the proposal for Robin (and Claire), after that, I’ll work on the e-book version of HtCB, then I’ll move on to Cady II, and after that, see if I can wrap up the crit I’m currently working on.
My work hours are all screwed up, mostly because my sleep hours are all screwed up. This has been playing havoc with my productivity, but I’m trying this today to see how it goes. Three may be my new off-to-work time. (But I hope not.)
The proposal is coming along nicely, anyway.
I switched over to WordPress 2.01 this morning while I was on the phone with my son. (If it’s 4:30 am his time, he remembers to call.)
The site seems to be working correctly, although the RSS feed on the front page of the site is now carrying comments instead of articles. I’m going to have to troop through the code and see what’s up with that.
I did not finish any of what I wanted to get done yesterday. However, I did complete what I had to finish–those three deceptively simple questions in I See You. Yeah. My entire workday went down the drain on those puppies. But I got the thing in the mail in time, and it didn’t cost me a forty+ dollar overnight shipping fee, either.
Today, I’m going to have to sit down and figure out an honest-to-God work schedule. I’ve discovered that, much as I’d like to be, I’m not a winging-it kind of writer, and I’m into February already, with less done than I want.
That line from Romancing the Stone: “There are esschedules to be maintained … even in Columbia.” I like that line. It speaks to me.
I’ve actually been observing weekends so far this year, forcing myself to turn off the office computer on Friday when I wrap and and not permitting myself to turn it back on until Monday morning. (I still check the customer-support e-mail account once a day over the weekend, but I do that from the family computer, and I don’t let myself do anything else on the site.)
I’m not sure just yet what effect on my writing taking real days off will have. I haven’t adjusted. It’s been nice from a family perspective, though. I hang out with the guys, we do fairly impressive imitations of the Solanum tuberosum grabatus, or common couch potato. We stay up together on Saturday and listen to Art Bell. I knit.
This is the current thing I’m knitting. It is the unblocked bottom border of an experimental sweater. I haven’t yet built the body — have a few more blocks to do to finish the border, and then I’ll start working in the verticals.
I also did almost the entire copyedit of I SEE YOU over the weekend, but that was minor. The changes were minimal, and I did most of it while watching the SuperBowl. (Not a football fan.) I still have three points on the copyedit to finish up today, things that could potentially cause some reworking. But not a lot, I don’t think. Then I need to get to work on the proposal for the next one. A crit. Worldbuilding Clinic. HTCB. Cady II. Get the redesign on the website that includes the Shop links finished.
I try not to think about the list of to-dos. Especially on the weekends, when my aggravating workaholic side kicks and screams and tries to lure me into the office on all sorts of ludicrous pretexts. I keep reminding myself that last year was not fun, that I do not want to duplicate it this year, that if I rest regularly, I will not finish out the year thinking never writing again might not be such a bad thing. I have fallen back on knitting like a junkie falls on crack; knitting hits the switch on my brain that silences the workaholic. It induces a transcendental state wherein I am present in the moment, but wherein the moments become silence, the stitches and patterns form, the colors connect in their odd juxtapositions, picking up each others highlights, and the textures play off one other. My fingers move, progress progresses, and the hurry-up-stuff-to-do-let’s-go-let’s-go part of me gets the crap kicked out of it by the serene, meditative me that is doing something.
Knitting is something. It’s especially something for Type A Libra/Metal Rats who, after more than a minute of doing nothing, begin fidgeting. So far, since I picked it back up shortly before Christmas, I’ve knitted two sweaters, one and a half pairs of socks (long story), a big blanket, and most of a third, dressy sweater. Plus the border above. With eyebrow arched, I note that that’s a lot of relaxing.
Got things organized. Know what I’ll be doing for the next couple of weeks.
First, I’ll be finishing up the wire-bound paper version of Create A Character Clinic. I have to correct the typos readers have spotted (the corrections will go into the .pdf version, too), and do back cover artwork.
Second, I’ll be editing Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood and doing a reprint of it, both in .pdf format and in trade paper.
It was a Locus bestseller and received excellent reviews the first time around, and if it generates interest and a positive response the second time, I intend to pitch new books in the series to my agent.
And, third, I’ll be putting together a more complete proposal for the second EMT book for Claire. I have a brief one with my agent right now, but I’d rather go in strong the first time, and that deserves a strong first pitch.
It’s good to have a plan.
I’ve been slogging the manuscript revision for days. Tonight, just a few minutes ago, I finished the last of the revision type-in and sent it out to my editor. Tomorrow, I’ll send the tabbed hand-edited copy to her overnight.
Done, done, done.
I heard from Anna Genoese on HAWKSPAR just today. She really liked it. We’ll bat ideas back and forth and pretty soon I’ll start into the revision of that.
Meanwhile, though, I have some time where I can do nothing but crits and worldbuilding classes while I think about the next projects I want to propose. And work on the store. The affiliate program still isn’t working right, and the temp-shop programmer is trying to figure out why. I hope we’ll be able to get it fixed tomorrow. I spent hours on it yesterday and today without any luck.
Mentally, I’m still in that funny, fuzzy, sunlight-drenched, cotton-wrapped place. It almost feels like, having stopped the ceaseless forward rush that has been propelling me for the last however many years, I don’t yet have the power built up to make myself move again. The feeling is pleasant. Like sleeping in on sun-dried sheets on a Saturday, only all the time.
I’ve been neglecting regular posting on the weblog, but that’s part of it. This decadent cat-like basking does not lend itself to regular output or massive effort (though the last few days have included plenty of that.)
I’ll kick myself back into gear soon.
Got the neatest news today. I sold (or, rather, Penguin Putnam sold) Bulgarian translation rights to MIDNIGHT RAIN; the book should be available in Bulgaria and wherever else the purchasing publisher distributes sometime this month.
Bulgarian rights. So cool.
Create A Character Clinic is done. Came in at just over 30,000 words, is on its way in beta version to my readers, and I am HAPPY. And done for at least a few days.
Heard from Claire this morning that she loved I SEE YOU, that the revisions are small and few, and that she’d like to have another book with my EMTs from ISY. All in all, today has been a damned good day.
The novel LAST GIRL DANCING was born as IF I BROUGHT LAMBS, on 9/1/96, with the following poem that I wrote. I’ve included the whole page, because initially each chapter was supposed to be preceded by a poem from the killer, and, finding it this morning, I thought the header was kind of funny. Along with this poem, I just discovered the synopsis for that previous version of the story.
The core idea so horrified my then-agent that he told me the book could never sell, and the core idea is what finally sold, though through a different agent. Which goes to show that different agents have different opinions of the same things.
Here’s the page:
A Collection of Psycho Poetry for
IF I BROUGHT LAMBSTITLE POEM
if i brought lambs, lambs
to slaughter, my fairest Carida,
would you feed me
would you make me
sweet stews from the livers,
rich pies from the kidneysor would you chastise me
Carida, Carida
for killing the tender young lambs?
The poetry didn’t make it to LAST GIRL DANCING. The killer did. So I thought I’d share the poetry, too, as an odd aside.
I’ll note that this is the only Psycho Poem I wrote for the book–the problem with including psycho poetry is that to get it, you have to be your own psycho. Ugh.
Cover art for I SEE YOU.
I love this. I think it pops. And it looks nice and hot for July.
The concept was originally ‘words written on a mirror’ — yes, my obsession with mirrors and their magic continues in I SEE YOU. It got changed a bit, I suspect because the designers discovered it would be hard to see words written in the steam, and the last thing you want is for someone to struggle to read the title of your book.
Would have been easier, no doubt, if I’d had the words written in blood or something … but there’s no magic in that.